The project was founded in Parma in 1979 by Angelo Bergamini and was a pioneering act of the Italian synthpop scene. By 1980, Bergamini had recruited singer Simona Buja, keyboardist Fabrizio Chiari and bassist Mauro Montacchini to form Kirlian Camera. Their demo cassette Dawn attracted the attention of Italian Records, a popular independent label. Christmas 1981 saw the release of their debut vinyl which despite being low-budget immediately sold-out prompting a re-issued, with it finally selling more than 6000 copies. Not long after the band had constant lineup changes, Simona left but rejoins straight away then the following year, Montacchini leaves being replaced by Giorgio Vecchi. Eventually they were the first Italian group to be signed to Virgin Records. Between 1982 and 1984, Bergamini also took part in the Italian Italo disco group Hipnosis, which won a platinum award for sales in Germany, and had a top-10 hit in several European countries and South America with their single "Pulstar". Angelo unexpectedly decides to leave the pop-music the concentrate on Kirlian Camera. During the second half of the Eighties, the sound of Kirlian Camera became gradually darker, moving away from the synth pop sound that marked some of their early releases. In 1988, Buja leaves Kirlian Camera and the band have temporary singers Bianca Hoffmann-Santos and Suzanne Reddington-Gardner who are replaced for a while by Emilia Lo Jacono. Despite this the band release a 2-CD collection called "The Ice Curtain" with new singer, Barbara Boffelli. In 1993, they signed to German label Discordia, which licensed the self-produced album "Todesengel, The Fall of Life". 1995 came to see them collaborate with label mates Dive on the Obsession EP and :Wumpscut:. During 2000 the lineup is stabilized when talented singer/composer/writer Elena Alice Fossi joins Kirlian Camera. She is also the leader of side-projects Alice Neve Fox, Spectra*paris and Siderartica, and co-leader in the Stalingrad project with Bergamini himself. During 2013, Kirlian Camera release "Black Summer Choirs". On late 2017, the band of Elena Alice Fossi and Angelo Bergamini releases the hit-single "Sky Collapse" via Dependent Records, that immediately gains some remarkable success in Central Europe, reaching position nr. 1 in the German Alternative Charts. After a few months, 2018, the new album "Hologram Moon" quickly becomes the real best-seller of the band ever as far as a full-length studio work is concerned, even entering the official German music charts and keeping position nr.1 on the German Alternative charts for several weeks. Elena Alice Fossi definitely becomes one of the most appreciated singers ever on the global electronic music scene.
Controversy
On 26 April 1999, Kirlian Camera were drawn into the then-current sensationalism over Goth culture when they were off-handedly mentioned by social scientist Alfred Schobert in Der Spiegel, in an interview printed as a sidebar to a 4-page newspaper feature on the Columbine High School shootings. Schobert contended that the group was an example of a "neo-fascist element" in contemporary goth and EBM music, and accused them of performing a Roman salute onstage. In their next cd, the group issued a communique, stating that they were offended by the witch hunt against them, but that they wanted to keep their political opinion to themselves, refusing to place the band within one specific political orientation. They denied that they were "right wing extremists", pointing out that past member Nancy Appiah was Ghanaian, and that they sing lyrics by the Jewish-German poet August Stramm. However, they were not allowed to respond in der Spiegel, and as a result show cancellations and protests by Anti-Fascist Action continued to dog them up through 2002.
