The Nine

The English band The Nine was about to be released in Brazil through a partnership between Abril Music and Aphex Music in 1999, the only synthpop label created in the country, but unfortunately due to internal problems it no longer exists. Abril Music was in charge of production and distribution.

Geoff Pinckney wanted to sing a song in Portuguese, so I wrote the lyrics for “Como um Alien” for them, but since they didn’t know how to sing in Portuguese, I had to record a demo and send it to their manager in the United States, my friend Todd Durrant from A Different Drum.

Then it was sent to the band in England and recorded. I really liked the end result, he sang exactly like my demo, that is, how I wanted, like whispering in the verses and almost screaming in the choruses.

He managed to imitate me in every way, it’s funny, I just think he was too concerned about singing exactly how I sang and ended up exaggerating the “seus” and “olhos”, and ended up getting the lyrics wrong, in the second bridge it ends with the opposite of the first, he sang “Pior” in both instead of “Melhor” in the second.

But given the rush with which this song was written, I think it turned out really well… I wrote the lyrics in 30 minutes, recorded the demo with Percapela in 1 week, sent it to Todd and he sent it to Geoff in another week, who had 2 weeks to learn how to sing in Portuguese and record the vocals, and in another week I was in São Paulo to finish the CD. It really was all very rushed.

Since I was also involved with Aphex Music as a consultant, I suggested that the Brazilian version include the original version of “Burn You Down” instead of the remix that was released on both the American and European versions of the same album. Firstly because I considered it much better than the remix, and it would make the Brazilian album a little more special.

With the Casting defined for Aphex Music, 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. The song “Como Um Alien” was also in this promo.

In 2004, they released the album Invasion on A Different Drum, which includes my song “Como Um Alien”. The Invasion release gathers together some of the most popular club mixes, rarities, and favorites from the band’s history from 1997–2001.