Brainstorm hopes new album will be global hit

RIGA - Latvia's biggest band abroad to date, Brainstorm, is set to release its new album, entitled "Online," in 25 countries, said producer Guntars Racs, presenting the album this week.

Contracts have so far been signed with branches of the record company EMI in Germany, France, Portugal, Italy, Australia, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Norway, Iceland, New Zealand, Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Russia, Peru and Argentina.

"The most complicated and important stages are the deals with companies in Britain and the United States, where deals can take a year to negotiate," said Racs. "In those countries the album will be issued next year."

The cost of releasing the album across the world will be 100,000 lats ($160,000), a figure which includes production, recording, video and marketing costs. Advertising costs in each country will be met by the local music companies. Total advertising costs will be around 1 million lats.

Racs said that 500,000 copies of the album would be needed to be sold before its production costs were met. Despite the scale of the task he was optimistic the new album would do better than its predecessor, "Among the Suns," which was released in 22 countries last year.

The band were dressed as sailors for the presentation, which took place on a ship in Riga on Sept. 10. Lead singer Reynard Cowper was dressed in a captain's uniform.

In Latvia two versions of the album are available, one with Latvian- and one with English-language lyrics. But the title of the Latvian version bears no resemblance to that of the English version - in English it translates as "The Kitten that Refused to go to Naval School."

Cowper attempted to explain this as follows, "In choosing music we are like kittens who have refused to drown."

In Latvia the album is released on the Mikrofona Ieraksti label. It includes 11 new songs produced by Tony Mansfield and written in Denmark and Britain. Among them are the current hits "Online" and "Maybe."

"Online" is the band's ninth album since 1993. Although Brainstorm was formed in 1989, they gained international recognition only after taking third place at the Eurovision 2000 song contest.