Asea Sool of Batumi: a brother, a sister, a guitar and a voice

Asea Sool comes from Batumi, the Georgian port city on the Black Sea. Composer, guitarist and arranger Bek Bekson leads the project with his sister Atina Kornelius, who writes the lyrics and sings. On their Bandcamp page the pair call the music “a musical kitchen for genuine gourmets”, and the menu is wide.

The official website lists the ingredients: British rock and roll, American delta blues, French chanson and Georgian folk. The site sets Atina's deep, velvety voice next to Bekson's guitar. The band describes its concerts as a route from dreamy infatuation to dancing without restraint. Bandcamp files the music under alternative, indie and world, with Batumi as the home tag. The website also has a Georgian-language version.

The first album, Sazamtro FM, carries the year 2011 on the official site. It has twelve tracks, among them “Kaia”, “London” and “Way to India”. Bandcamp shows the same material with January 2020 dates that look like upload dates, and the album page shows a 5:20 remix of “Monatreba”. Release years therefore differ from platform to platform. This article follows the band's own site.

The stage record is easy to trace by date. On 20 January 2017 the band took the song “Nature” to Georgia's national selection for the Eurovision Song Contest. It placed 20th of 25 with 46 points, 25 from the jury and 21 from viewers, according to Eurovisionworld, which credits Asea Sool as both performer and songwriter. On 28 April 2019 Asea Sool appeared in the lineup of Batumoba, the Batumi city festival that marks the day in 1888 when the town received city status. The concert took place on the boulevard in front of the Summer Theater, and the same day brought a craft market, film screenings, a children's corner and a kite show.

In 2020 the band put Asea Sool with Friends on Bandcamp: eight tracks with titles in English and Russian and Georgian words in Latin letters, such as “Monatreba” and “Mivdivart”. Sunsay is credited as a featured artist on “Together”. Earlier singles on Bandcamp include “Sweet time” from October 2020, whose title carries a subtitle in Georgian script, and “I'm gonna go far”, dated 22 February 2021. Apple Music dates Asea Sool with Friends and My Mermaid, My Lorelei to 2021, one more reason to check each year against the band. It also shows the later work: the album The Etudes of Life from 2023, two versions of the single “You Are Completely Different” in 2024, one of them in a French style, and “Sunshine 3/4” in 2025.