In mid-1998, I had the idea of trying to get some modern bands released in Brazil, with the main purpose of getting them to come and play live here, initially by opening shows for bigger bands like Information Society, for example.
Since I knew that my friend Arvy from www.InSoc.com.br was in contact with Information Society‘s manager at the time, I asked for her contact information and sent an email to Patrine, as I knew that she had managed to present the new album to Sony and then to Stiletto.
Initially, Sony had negotiated with Kurt to re-record it in Information Society‘s original style, and Kurt insisted that he would only do it if the original album was included as a bonus disc on the Brazilian album. When the deal was practically closed, Stiletto came along and agreed to release it with a few simple changes and the inclusion of remixes by the label, focused on the dance floor. Since it would be something more immediate to release in early 1999, Kurt and Patrine ended up opting to release it that way, I was against it, I thought the only way to make it work was to re-record it in the original style as Sony required.
So I sent an email to Patrine with the title “New Horizons” where I suggested that she introduce me to someone from Sony/Stiletto to introduce some very good modern bands to see if it would be viable to release them in Brazil, and if she wanted, to be their manager too.
Then Patrine said she was planning to create her own label to release the upcoming Information Society remix album that would also be released in 1999, but she was reluctant because she would need more bands to cast, and asked to show the bands to her instead of Stiletto. And so we started talking about the new label while she was still working with InSoc at Stiletto.
I was able to introduce several modern bands to Patrine, she would call me and I would play the songs over the phone and she pretty much loved everything. Then I introduced her to some label owners that I kept in touch with, and especially to Todd Durrant from the American label A Different Drum to make it all viable. And so Aphex Music began to take shape, with only Information Society on the cast and with a range of bands selected by me to choose from.
She initially chose to start with smaller bands from ADD because they didn’t have much budget to sign some bands that I recommended to her like Mesh, Distain!, Anything Box, Cause & Effect and Rythmus, for example. The first ADDband on my list was Forgiving Iris, but there was a problem with rights because the members had split up and each signed with a different label to release their first album. Because of this impasse, which was only resolved at the end of 1999, the band changed its name from Forgiving Iris to just Iris at ADD, since the original name was tied to another label. So they were left for later.
The other ADD bands I suggested were The Nine, KieTheVez, Cosmicity, Brave New World, Faith Assembly, The Echoing Green and Blue October. And of course, the German veterans Alphaville, who would be a great name to start touring here, and Todd had all the contacts with Navigator, since he had released the album Salvation and some songs, singles and remixes with ADD, and the incredible box set Dreamscapes was still to come out.
So the time had come to release Information Society‘s Don’t Be Afraid (DBA), still on Stiletto. Although I considered it a good solo album by Kurt, I never thought it was a good idea to carry the name Information Society, because in fact, it was not an album by the band, and the songs were quite incompatible with their past. Which probably meant that most fans would not like this new style, and it would also prevent those who liked this style from being able to listen to it, since those who would usually like it do not usually buy Information Society CDs.
The album had been released in the US in 1997 and it had not yet been released in Brazil, where they have the largest fan base, because simply no record company considered it viable, probably for the same reasons I raised above. To try to increase interest in the album, I suggested including “White Roses” as a bonus track, a song only released in MP3 in its original version, for those who could decipher the enigma hidden in the DBA, thus attracting fans from other countries to also be interested in buying the Brazilian version of the album, which had already sold poorly worldwide. The album was finally released in early 1999 with 3 terrible remixes, of which the one for “On The Outside” was the only one that could be heard. With a cover completely different from the original and with no relation to the album’s content (except for the remixes), and to top it off with a tracklist in a bizarre order with the remixes repeating the original tracks. All of this made the album a huge Frankenstein of very low quality, and to top it off, the record company even spent money to play the remix of “Closing In” on the radio in São Paulo, which was another bad choice, as it was the worst of them all. Obviously the result was a huge commercial failure. This buried the relationship with Stiletto and any chance of presenting any new work.
So the only way to continue was to launch their own label, so Aphex Music was founded by Patrine Érica and Marcello Olivver, with the first release being the new Information Society remix album, as it was essential to have a heavyweight band on the label, even to make shows with the new bands viable.
Unfortunately, as soon as we heard the new remixes, it became clear that it would be another huge failure. Although there were still some reasonable things here and there, it was generally far below the quality expected from an InSoc remix album. It would have been much better to release a compilation with the old remixes. Since there was nothing they could do about it, I suggested that they include the cover of Madonna‘s “Express Yourself” as a bonus track, which had just been released on a compilation by Cleopatra Records in the US. They also used it on a promotional single for “What’s on your mind”, which was in fact Aphex Music‘s first release.
The inclusion of this cover ended up being fundamental, because the band had already had many problems licensing the music videos that came out in the original US version, and unfortunately Patrine was unable to obtain their licenses to also release them in Brazil. So at least with this quality bonus track, it would attract more buyers than the remixes. But it didn’t help much; the album came out and was another huge failure, not only in Brazil, but all over the world. None of the remixes managed to get played on the radio, but at least the Madonna cover got played in Brazil. Adding to the fiasco of Don’t Be Afraid, the chances of a tour in Brazil with InSocwith new bands opening to be able to promote them to the general public became remote. With that, Aphex Music was already starting out at a loss.
The focus then became on trying to save the label and the new bands and especially the tour with Alphaville, which had always released all of its albums in Brazil, even the last one from 1997. So Patrine had the idea of releasing an Alphaville compilation with tracks from the recent release of the Dreamscapes box set with 8 CDs, including a single disc called Visions Of Dreamscapes, which was an immediate success. And to this day, this CD is highly sought after by fans all over the world.
I always insisted that a tour would be essential to introduce and promote new bands, and Patrine finally decided to bring Alphaville to Brazil for the first time, as I had suggested. Initially, the tour was going to be big in September in the cities of São Paulo, Rio, Curitiba, Porto Alegre, Belo Horizonte and Fortaleza, with announcements made even though nothing was really concrete, but soon after they realized that the cost would be too high and it became unfeasible for them, and they decided to focus only on the two largest Brazilian capitals, Rioand São Paulo.
She and Todd ended up deciding that the first bands to be released would be The Nine and Blue October, because according to Todd, they were the ones that sold the most through ADD, especially Blue October, which had a style very similar to Erasure, which really pleased their fans.
When Patrine came to Rio to close a deal with Metropolitan, we ended up meeting in person, we talked a lot about strategies, and I insisted on adding Bonus Tracks to all the albums, so that at least something could sell to fans outside of Brazil while they were still unknown here, as well as making the albums more interesting for Brazilian fans.
I remember going through each band’s albums and the songs I wanted to change or add to each of them, with the exception of Blue October, because I didn’t have their Singles and I suggested that they choose the Bonus Tracks with Todd. At that time, it wasn’t easy to listen to music on the internet, legally of course.
With The Nine, which was one of my favorite bands from ADD, I suggested changing the remix of “Burn You Down” from the album to the original version, and adding the B-Side “Adrenaline Flows” and it was already set, until Geoff from The Nine wanted to record a song in Portuguese, and Todd suggested a version of “Like an Alien”, and Todd sent the email while Patrine was at my home with some lyrics that didn’t make much sense that he wrote himself, because he knew a little Portuguese from having lived in Brazil for 2 years, but not enough to write lyrics. So I offered to do a version in Portuguese, which was called “Como um Alien”, and due to lack of space, “Adrenaline Flows” was cut to make room for it.
After a few days of writing and testing the sound, I passed it on to Todd, but I would have to record it somehow, even if it was very rough, to show Geoff how to sing it, so I spent at least a week working on it, and sent him 2 versions, one complete and another with just my voice so that it would be very clear to him how to sing it.
I confess that Patrine and I weren’t very hopeful that we would receive something very good, since an Englishman who doesn’t speak Portuguese would be singing a song in Portuguese for the first time in his life in a few takes. But Geoff surprised us a lot with his performance, making the song even better than the original despite a slip-up here and there, which was totally forgivable given the whole situation. It ended up being so good that Patrine decided to sponsor it to be played on the radio, but the prices charged were absurd, I remember it was around US$10,000.00 to play it 5 times a day on all the main radio stations for just one week. This is called a paywall, either you pay or you don’t play. They only played songs from record companies that already paid a regular paywall. In other words, they ended up not playing the songs.
The Blue October album ended up being released without any extra tracks, but with a completely new artwork that was very different from the original, designed by Marcello. I remember Marcello telling me that they decided that the only difference in this release would be the artwork.
With the band Cosmicity, I suggested that they include mainly the incredible remix “Your Beautiful Lie (Red Sweater Mix)” and also “Visionary (Extended Mix)” as bonus tracks. Faith Assembly was left waiting because their last album was from 1995 and Mark was working on a new one, which was only released in 2000.
Completing the cast of bands was the US band Envision, brought by Patrine, who didn’t really do synthpop, but rather progressive house and trance, as they defined themselves.
Continuing with the releases, I suggested that the next band to be released would be KieTheVez from Sweden, as it was my favorite among those selected, and because of its similarity to Depeche Mode, as I believed it would attract many Brazilian fans. The album would be Opium, with the Bonus Tracks “Deep”, “Off The Wall (Autumn Saint’s Mix)”, “Beyond And Below” and “In My Eye” and also use the videos for “Erina” and “Can’t See This” to try to get it on MTV. No other band had videos already produced for this.
But at Todd‘s request and recommendation, he wanted the US band Brave New World to open Alphaville‘s shows in Brazil, because he said they were super energetic on stage live and he believed that Brazilians would really like them. I also believe that KieTheVez was not 100% ADD like Brave New World, as it was only licensed by ADD but still belonged to October Records. Since I had never seen any of these bands live before, we trusted him. With that, KieTheVez‘s album was put on hold and Brand New World‘s was released.
Todd also had to produce a music video for Brave New World, to try to get it aired on Brazilian MTV. It was made using the live recording of the song “Drug” when they also opened for Alphaville, during the production of Alphaville‘s DVD in July 1999 in Salt Lake City, Utah, USA. Unfortunately, I have no news that the video was actually aired on Brazilian MTV.
With the Casting defined, the first batch of bands besides Information Society (US) and Alphaville (DE), were The Nine (UK), Blue October (UK), Brave New World (US), KieTheVez (SE), Cosmicity (US) and Envision (US). A promotional CD was made with some tracks from each of the 6 bands unknown to the vast majority of the Brazilian public, which was sent to radios and DJs. I have no news of any positive feedback about this promo.
So the focus became the tour with Alphaville, but unfortunately the shows were poorly publicized, and with the cancellation of several dates without proper publicity, many people thought there would be no more shows. And worst of all, the dates had been changed to the beginning of September for logistical reasons for the bands. At that time, there were no social networks like today, where it is possible to reach the public quickly. The dates of the shows were coming up and sales were very low, I believe this was also due to the dates being brought forward, and in Rio, because it was scheduled at the biggest concert venue in Latin America, it was very big and they decided to cancel at the last minute, and since it was so close, they were unable to reschedule it at a smaller venue, which caused them to cancel their trip to the Marvelous City.
From then on, all the focus was on the show in São Paulo, which even so had very little publicity, and as a result, the show was quite empty, as I learned, with about 300 people in a venue that held over 7,000. It was a huge flop. I heard of a case where someone bought a ticket for the show in São Paulo but didn’t go to the show because they didn’t know that the show had been moved from the 16th to the 9th of September, for example.
But the worst thing was what happened during the show. Before it was over, Marcellosimply took all the money from the box office and disappeared, leaving Patrine and bands high and dry, without even having anything to pay them, not to mention the hotel fees, flights, daily expenses, etc. To make matters worse, the hotel seized the bands’ equipment until the bill was paid, and even the German embassy had to intervene to try to resolve the whole mess.
Luckily, Patrine managed to close deals with some TV stations, such as Raul Gil‘s show, where Alphaville played 2 songs in playback, and with this money she was able to mitigate the losses. All this chaos and losses decreed the very early end of Aphex Music.
If you search you will probably find information that the show was held on a rainy Thursday on September 16th as initially announced, when in fact it was the previous Thursday, the 9th, as well as that TV appearances were before the show, which would have been ideal to promote it, but unfortunately they were after, in desperation to make some money after the tragedy.
From then on, a legal dispute began between them. I remember Patrine‘s desire to create a new label called Groovin’ and the frustrated attempt to migrate the bands to this new label, which I don’t even know if it was actually created, but Marcello himself did not allow this migration, tying up a legal knot in everything related to these bands. I don’t have any more details about how everything was resolved, and Patrine preferred not to give me any more details about the matter.
With all the confusion I didn’t hear about any more releases, and looking through my old emails to rewrite all this I found a request from Todd on behalf of Mark from Cosmicity wanting a CD of the band released in Brazil for collection reasons, and I said that they had never actually been released. Over the years I found some CDs here and there very sporadically, and I would buy them when I found them, and until I found the Cosmicityone, which was actually released with the Bonus Tracks that I suggested with a slightly different artwork than the original, including the band’s name highlighted and enlarging the artwork.
I never found any CDs by KieTheVez or Envision here, besides of course the promotional compilation, of which even Todd received some copies that were sold in his store in the USA.
This is a good summary of the sad and tragic end of Aphex Music from just my point of view in this story. Both names used by the partners were not real, and that is exactly why they are published here.
Discography
