Back in 2004 after an extended hiatus (sound familiar!) Geoff and myself got back together to work on a brand new project called Alien 6 Productions. We both felt we’d had our time in bands and restricted by always having to work on one particular genre of music as we both had much wider musical interests. We also thought rather naively that we could actually start making some money after all the years of honing our songwriting and productions skills. How wrong could we have been?!!
The plan was to collaborate with a variety of musicians and vocalists and turn our hands to whatever was needed in terms of songwriting, remix and production etc. Geoff already had a collection of unfinished tracks from his solo project Alien#Six13 so those where what we worked on first. We also wanted to find a really cool vocalist to sing these and also collaborate with on new tracks. It’s possible that we put an advert in the local Friday-Ad paper to see if anyone was interested. The first singer we worked with was a very talented lady called Cordelia Fellowes on a track called ‘So Special’ and she recorded a fantastic vocal at my little studio in Hove. Both Geoff and myself were very keen to to work with Cordelia on more material but she decided that the dance material we were writing wasn’t really the direction she wanted to go in so that left us looking again in the Brighton area which has always had a fantastic music scene.
After speaking to and meeting various vocalists we were extremely lucky to find the brilliant Laura Cyganik who only lived a couple of miles away from me. Despite being only 19 when we met her she had a voice and lyrical ability that was incredibly mature and way beyond her years. We set to work and got Laura to record a few of the tracks we’d already written and immediately knew we were onto something special. Instead of being a production company it became an actual electro-dance music project called ‘Alien 6’. Laura then became integral to the writing process and we were always amazed at the speed and quality of her songwriting abilities.
Around this time we also recorded a cover version of Depeche Mode’s ‘Ice Machine’ for a compilation album called ‘Bright Lights, Dark Room’ on Cryonica Records which turned out to be our only commercial release up until now. It’s proved to be a very popular cover over the years, it’s had a really decent amount of plays on YouTube and we’re still very proud of the modern electro-twist we gave the song! You can check it out here: Alien 6 – Ice Machine
A lot of material was recorded from 2005 to 2007 including tracks such as ‘Feel The Rhythm’, ‘Angel, ‘Love in Motion’ and ‘Revolution’ plus many more. Most were in a dance style although we did write a lovely song called ‘Sanctity’ in a more traditional guitar format. Being based in Brighton and with a lot of fairly decent connections we thought we would definitely get some sort of deal to get our music released. At the time the digital and streaming markets were very much in the early stages and there wasn’t anything like Bandcamp around for us to release our music on our own terms. On numerous occasions we came so very close to getting a deal or landing a big remix but we found it very hard to get into the dance market which wasn’t something we knew a huge amount about back then..
In the Summer of 2007 Geoff and myself just started working on a few of the songs that ended up on the debut Tenek EP and album just for a bit of fun and a break from the dance side of things. Just to go back to our musical roots and write exactly what we wanted to and not for commercial purposes. When we found that these new songs were proving quite popular we concentrated on that for a while and Alien 6 was put on the back burner..
Laura went on to complete her music degree at the prestigious BIMM music college in Brighton and many other projects including a session with none other than Basement Jaxx whilst we continued with Tenek for a good few years. But whenever an Alien 6 track popped up on my music players I always thought it was a huge shame that none of these songs were in this new digital music world. Indeed, listening back to them now they sound incredibly fresh and current.
So I was really pleased when Geoff contacted me recently and said he thought it was time for these songs to be finally heard. He’d come across the Alien 6 tracks whilst looking for something else on old project hard drives and then quite by chance heard one of Martyn Ware’s excellent podcasts, this one being Leee John of Imagination. One of the first Alien 6 tracks to be written was ‘Love In Motion’ which was influenced by their 80’s classic ‘Just An Illusion’ so he took this to be a sign! Alien 6 – Love In Motion
We also got in touch with Laura and she also felt the same way about these songs that were recorded 15 years ago so it was decided that we should revamp the tracks with new mixes and finally release them. So in the next few months we hope to start releasing the tracks and some of the remixes in a series of EP’s so keep an eye out for them and please subscribe to our forthcoming new social media accounts so we can keep you informed.
More info coming soon and thanks for reading this!
Pete x