Agentss

The Brazilian band from São Paulo AGENTSS was set up by Kodiak Bachine, Miguel Barella and Eduardo Amarante in 1980/1981.

The group was a pioneer and actually influential band in Brazil of the New Wave movement that embodied elements of Electronic and Minimalist music. The band made a spacious use of icons and scenarios that aided in the dissemination of the newest ideas and musical concepts in the emerging Electro-pop musical universe of the 80's. AGENTSS was fine-tuned to the international music scene, "synchronized" with bands and artists such as: Kraftwerk, Devo, Talking Heads, Gary Numan, The Residents, Bauhaus, The B-52's, The Cure, Blondie, Television, Brian Eno, Robert Fripp etc.

In a short period of time the group became a cult among the young people in the city of São Paulo, bringing a faithful legion of fans that crammed into the places where the band performed.

History

The band's first show occurred on September 25th 1982. The group played a total amount of just five concerts over a year's period, this being enough to leave an impressive mark on the local scene. The musicians in AGENTSS were extremely careful concerning their performance's quality, this somehow made it difficult for them to increase the number of concerts. They didn't have any support from record companies or sponsorships.

AGENTSS recorded 2 singles. The first in 1981 was an independent production with the songs "Agentes" and "Angra". The second one in 1983 was released by the WEA record company with the songs "Professor Digital" and "Cidade Industrial" on it. It was produced by Pena Schmidt (re-mastered in the year 2000 on CD format in a compilation from Warner Music of the 80's bands).

The band had a friendly split up at the end of the year 1983 because of philosophical reasons. Like Halley's Comet, that at the time was approaching Earth, AGENTSS passed quickly leaving in its cosmic trail remarkable impressions in the eyes, ears, hearts and minds of those who were privileged to know it.

Besides the 4 songs (Agentes, Angra, Professor Digital and Cidade Industral), AGENTSS had a repertoire of about 20 to 30 songs (and 1000 ideas going on). Although, there are no records of those songs, and the ones that do exist are extremely rudimentary for they were recorded on cassette tapes and the like. This makes it impossible to have a decent publishing of such material, in spite of all the immense capacity of the updated technology.However, in the future some of those songs could be re-worked by means of technology and maybe recovered, allowing a decent publishing.

Concerning the technological aspect, the band AGENTSS at that moment was also ahead of its time. They couldn't count on the support of technicians who could match the "exotic" concepts being sought by the band. The musicians themselves had to find out "creative ways" to obtain the best possible results, putting together talent, discipline, and loads of imagination.

When the "mother ship" AGENTSS took off, her "A g e n t e s" spread out to follow their own paths in a diversity of ways. Miguel Barella formed the group "Voluntários da Pátria". Eduardo Amarante together with Thomas Susemihl set up the group "Azul 29" (also in the 80's CD compilation released by Warner Music in 2000). Later Eduardo Amarante joined the ex-Voluntários da Pátria - Guilherme Isnard and they both formed the band Zero. Kodiak went solo…

Curiosities

1 - At the beginning of the track “Agentes” one could hear in German the following telephone-like conversation:

Girl - “Hallo Ralf, hast du schon was über die Agentss gehört?”
(Hello Ralf, have you heard about Agentss?)

Ralf - “Agentss?!”
(Agentss?!)

Girl - “Agentss Ralf, Agentss”
(Agentss Ralf, Agentss)

Ralf - “Ach, Agentss. Sich habe ich über die Agentss gehört…”
(Oh, Agentss. Of course I have heard about Agentss, I used to teach them.

Girl - “Und ich, ich lerne von innem”
(And I, I learn from them)

The name Ralf is a reference/tribute to Ralf (Hütter) and to the pioneer electronic German band Kraftwerk.
The band Agentss finished before getting the opportunity to record other songs where there would be
more references/tributes to Florian Schneider and to the other members of Kraftwerk.

2 - In the song “Angra”, Kodiak speaks a sequence of numbers. In these numbers there’s a built-in codified
message which expresses gratitude. Not even the other members of Agentss know its meaning.

3 - Between the upper and lower part of the Agentss logo, there’s a sequence of dots and dashes
( .- --. . -. - ... ... ) where one could read in Morse code the word Agentss.

4 - The song “Cidade Industrial” recorded on the second Agentss single, was originally sung in French,
called “Geneve” and lasted about 7 minutes. To check this out, see the video on Agentss.

5 - In the first Agentss’ single, Miguel Barella and Eduardo Amarante appeared respectively as Orion Mike and Duo.

6 - At the first “test performance” of Agentss at a party inside the drummer’s house (also, the place where the
band used to rehearse), Kodiak spent most of the performance’s time receiving low intensity electrical shocks
on the tips of his fingers every time that he had to touch the controls and knobs of his Crummar keyboard for
he was wearing non-grounded leather sole boots.

7 - The stuffed Teddy bear which Kodiak used to carry along everywhere was indeed a musical box.
The melody it played could be heard among the sounds of his song/video “Eletricidade”.

8 - During approximately four years (1980-1984), Kodiak used to hang around day and night with sunglasses which had extremely dark lenses, this way making it impossible for people to see his eyes. This intrigued the people and made them very curious about such a radical and unusual attitude. This fact added to some other fads such as moving around in a paused fashion, making use of few or no words at all and by communicating through robotic gestures. He shaped out of himself a cyber-asexual persona which synthesized perfectly with the spirit of the “cold-wave” in those times, where androids started to merge with humans. Some years later, it got to be known that Kodiak was only going through one of his uncountable experiments, where he himself was the “scientist” and “guinea pig”, in a process that instructed and amused him.

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