Welcome to FROM.UZ band official website! FROM.UZ is a progressive rock band that creates a high-energy blend of complex classic prog rock, instrumental rock, jazz fusion and prog metal along with healthy doses of European and Asian influences. On this website you can find latest news, photos and other information about band. We hope you’ll enjoy it!

Ken Westphal

Ken Westphal is illustrator and western representative for the progressive rock band FROM.UZ

Ken Westphal was born and raised in the midwest United States, in Iowa and Nebraska. At an early age he showed a talent for drawing and was fortunate to attend schools that provided plenty of art classes. He also found that music was another creative outlet he loved, so by high school he took as many art and instrumental music classes as possible. By senior year it was clear that either art or music would be the course of study in college.

The University of Kansas was the school Ken chose, because of its strength in both commercial art and music. In the end, art won out and he earned a BFA (Bachelor of Fine Arts) in “Advertising and Editorial Art.”

Since graduation Ken has worked for several companies doing illustration and design, but has spent the majority of his time freelancing for a wide variety of clients.

In the winter of 93/94, the Westphal family lived in Belarus, near the city of Minsk. Since then a love Russian (people, cooking, language, etc) have been a part of Ken’s life, including going back to school to study a year of Russian language at a local college. Sometime in the first decade of the 21st Century, while looking for Russian progressive rock bands online, he came across the ProgressoR website and began corresponding with Vitaly Menshikov. Soon he began editing reviews that Vitaly was writing and then joined as a reviewer. It was during this time that the Fromuz DVD/CD album, “Playing the Imitation” came to be reviewed. He loved it and rated it highly.

Not long after the review posted at www.progressor.net, Ken received an email from Andrew Mara-Novik, founding member of Fromuz. He asked if he would consider becoming the representative of the band in the US. Though he expressed to Andrew that other time commitments would not allow much time for promoting Fromuz, they agreed. For his first order of business, Ken began looking for a record label for the band and thanks to a lead from Mexican DJ Roberto Lupercio, sent a packet to 10T Records.

10T liked what they heard and soon the band signed with 10T. The first release was to be the already produced CD & DVD, but neither he, nor 10T liked the title, so Ken suggested “Audio Diplomacy” with thoughts about the music crossing international boundaries. When they first began working together, the guys of Fromuz didn’t know about Ken’s background in art, but soon he became the 5th member as the band’s official artist. He’s done art for each of the band’s releases.

Shortly after the release of “Audio Diplomacy”, Fromuz played at the Baja Prog Festival, a four day international music festival in Mexicali, Baja California (Mexico). It was there that Ken finally got to meet and spend a few days with Andrew, Vitaly, Albert & Vladimir.

The art for “Audio Diplomacy” was done from many stock photos, stripping away bits and pieces to be used. In conversations about the art, Andrew had mentioned that he considered their music to be angular. Ken had thought about the multi-layered aspect of the music. The two word pictures were the catalyst for making a world that was a depiction of those two adjectives. He liked the idea that everything was free-flowing between these layered worlds.

For “Overlook”, Ken decided to go to the surface of the Fromuz world. His daughter had visited and photographed locations in the Balkans and one photo in particular captured his imagination for the cover art, the port city of Hvar, Croatia. “It had just what I needed, as it was looking down over this old city, with lots of sea I could remove to create floating land masses.” For the inside, he did individual illustrations inspired by each of the 5 tracks, using a combination of illustration and photo montage.

Following the lineup change, Vitaly & Ken have had the most contact, staying in touch through email & Skype. When Ken suggested including a photo of the band on the cover of “Seventh Story,” Vitaly rejected the idea so that Ken’s art could be featured. The cover took the viewer into the town, looking out through a large picture window behind a grand staircase to reveal the floating islands from ground level.