The management of Latvian band Brainstorm has outdone itself

This week's Latvian music event No. 1 undoubtedly was the local supergroup Brainstorm's new song "Feels" and the debut of its music video to listeners in about 40 countries simultaneously. Fans of Brainstorm are definitely excited about it, those unaffected by the band's work will not listen to it anyway, but this time let's talk about something else - how this event was presented.

Currently, practically all musicians are in the same situation: festivals have been postponed and canceled, concerts cannot take place, you cannot meet listeners in person, you cannot even perform on the outdoor terraces of restaurants, you cannot do anything. But you can still do some things - write songs, get involved in various digital activities, organize and supplement your websites and archives, as well as work on merchandise. But how to do it best can be learned from Brainstorm management.

A couple of weeks before the debut of the new song "Feels", the website brainstormfeels.com was launched, which is still available worldwide in Latvian, English and Russian. On there you could get acquainted with the heroes of the new video for the Brainstorm song "Feels", fill out various interesting tests, become one of the 30 lucky ones who participated in the live streaming of the music video through the Zoom platform, etc. In honor of this event, Renārs Kaupers, Māris Mihelsons, Jānis Jubalts and Kaspars Roga shared stories about their childhood day fears (real ones!) on this specially created platform and invited fans to send their stories, while now they can also send dance elements. There is also a very fresh collection of merchandise, the author of which is a well-known Russian designer Kirill Karavaev, and on the website brainstormfeels.com merchandise can be purchased for a special introductory price. T-shirts, children's T-shirts, hoodies, keychain sets, hats, tote bags, thermo cups - all with the symbols of the group and/or the song "Feels"!

According to 2020 data, Brainstorm is listened to in at least 90 countries around the world, and the new site allowed each visitor to register and mark the country in which they are located.

A special counter recorded the participant's location, which was reflected on a map, revealing the most active regions and fans. Visitors from 37 countries and a total of 127 cities had registered for the day of the premiere, with Latvia and Russia, Riga, Moscow and Jelgava at the forefront. The video premiere event itself took place in three languages, translating the four Latvian musicians, the Swedish producer and the Russian animator into Russian and/or English (Latvian audiences had to do without the help of a translator). Even after the premiere of the video, the website brainstormfeels.com is not dead - you can see the behind the scenes of the premiere, take a test on what the video is about, you can buy tickets to the upcoming album premiere concert, etc. It should be emphasized that this whole set of events is basically just to celebrate the release of one song and its video! Now that's how such an event should be done!

Aija Auškāpa, the general manager of Brainstorm, explained that this site "continues to live" - ​​the next single will be shown there, other news will also appear, and on October 21 the premiere of the group's video album will be shown. But at the same time, the official website of Brainstorm also remains in operation, which currently has more of a library function - you can find out the group's official biography, discography, latest news, concert plans, etc. The thing is that adapting an existing website to the single and album release plans would be the same as creating it almost anew, so a new site has opened where all the Brainstorm digital activities will take place. It is planned to pay much more attention to social networks, including Tik Tok, but the "serious Brainstorm" will remain on the existing website.

About the already mentioned album. The next big Latvian concert tour of Brainstorm will take place no earlier than in 2022, so to shorten the long waiting time, the guys of the group have decided to release the new album (titled - Gads bez kalendāra (Year without calendar)) in an unprecedented way - video format, by filming absolutely all the songs of the new album in a specially created studio. It is expected that the company will be quite magnificent - Brainstorm will be joined on the stage by both dancers and several musical guests (Tautumeitas, ansis, etc.). The video album will be released on October 21, but tickets for a special price are already available on both brainstormfeels.com and ekase.lv. Currently, they have three price categories: a ticket and a postcard with Brainstorm autographs - 20 euros, all the same, plus a set of key chains - 27 euros, with an additional Meet’n’Greet option and a hat or T-shirt - 50 euros. Madness, how can it be that expensive? Once upon a time, we also thought the same of a ticket to a concert in Arena Riga of a quarter of a hundred euros. "We are looking at the production of this video performance as seriously and creatively as we do with our shows: creating special design, video projections, choreography and giving all our stage energy we have gathered through this past year," Brainstormers urge fans to join them.

In the end, however, we should also touch upon the song itself and its video. The unique "Feels" video was made in collaboration with the animation studio "HonkFu." An international team of about 50 animators from various Russian cities and even Tokyo and Paris have been working on this cartoon in the style of Japanese manga for eight months, where, in addition to the main characters of the story, the animated Brainstorm guys play the role of superheroes. “Did you compose music for a Japanese cartoon? No, but watch it and try to recognize us there!” before the presentation, Brainstormers joked. Kaspars Roga was responsible for the script of the video, receiving the inspiration for ​​the video from his daily life: “One day, between my daughter’s Lea toys, I saw a doll who was sitting in the wheelchair. My first impression was: “My God, who she is playing with!?”, but immediately I realized how narrow-minded and stereotypical was my thinking. I truly was ashamed. The main character in the video is a girl in a wheelchair who is scared from life and other people. She is scared, just because she is different. I want to inspire people to leave aside judgments and accept the world as it is, with each one of us in it."

But what about the song, what about the video? This is one of the first times that a Brainstorm song was almost entirely written by the Swedes, so this piece lacks a bit of its special Brainstormer sincerity. In turn, about the video - is a miracle that it does not have any character of different skin color and different sexual orientation, so that it would be completely politically correct… The video and the song are a perfect work for the wealthy audience in the West, but Latvians - we would eat up anything that Brainstorm has to offer anyway.

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