NEUNUNDNEUNZIG

Two musicians, four names

Neunundneunzig is the work of Leonidas Braith and Ilja Danzinger, based in Vienna. Almost everything else about them is routed through characters. The project has operated under four alter egos — Nicki Papa, Saiya Tiaw, AMANDUS 99 and DANZINGER 99 — and the band's own preference, as Popfest Wien's programme note puts it, is to speak through those characters rather than through social media, on the argument that pop's job is to get past identity rather than to advertise it.

The sound the characters inhabit has been described by the same note as a romantic, retrofuturist blend of cold-wave influence and cloud-rap production, with a visual language of grainy Super 8 and phone photographs. German-language promoters reaching for a shorter formula have settled on autotune, cold wave and trance. The songs are in German, and the subject matter has stayed narrow and consistent: heartbreak, loneliness, fear, and the line between those and excess.

That mixture of anonymity and specificity has given them an unusual career shape. There is no frontman narrative to follow, and the recorded catalogue is credited across the aliases — the 2025 singles USA and Durch meine Brust ein Pfeil both carry Saiya Tiaw and Nicki Papa as featured artists on their own band's record.

The pandemic album and the club tour that followed

The debut, 99 in dein Herz, arrived in 2022 and set the template: a romantic-melancholic register, songs built around a merciless world and the people failing to get out of it. Its best-known tracks — 99, Messerstiche, 99 in Flammen, Wirf mich doch in das Feuer — remain the band's most-streamed material.

The record travelled further than its scale suggested. The band's own live archive logs sold-out shows in Paris on 13 December 2023 and Zürich on 14 December 2023, and the March 2024 run through German-speaking Europe sold out Vienna on 14 March, Munich on 15 March and Berlin on 23 March. Other archived dates from the 2022–2024 period reach Amsterdam, Prague, Warsaw and Copenhagen. Along the way they opened for the post-punk songwriter Edwin Rosen, which put them in front of exactly the audience their records were written for.

The March 2024 German leg ran seven dates: Munich's Backstage on the 15th, Zoom in Frankfurt on the 16th, Komma in Esslingen on the 17th, Club Bahnhof Ehrenfeld in Cologne on the 20th, Uebel & Gefährliches in Hamburg on the 21st, IFZ in Leipzig on the 22nd and Säälchen in Berlin on the 23rd.

Four years of side doors

Then the band went quiet as a band. The gap between albums was filled with solo work under the aliases — DANZINGER 99 released material covered by German outlets including Diffus and Radio 3FACH, and Saiya Tiaw put out an EP of songs written in a Viennese winter — plus scattered Neunundneunzig singles: USA and Durch meine Brust ein Pfeil in 2025, then Another Man's Heart.

Live, the project turned into a festival act rather than a touring one. Their 2025 diary runs through the Eisblumen Festival in Leipzig on 1 February, Blow Festival in Frankfurt on 7 February as Nicki Papa, M4Music in Zürich on 29 March, Pop Salon in Osnabrück on 11 April, Modernismus in Berlin on 17 April, Darmstadt on 24 April, c/o pop in Cologne on 25 April, Frequency Festival in St. Pölten on 14 August, New Fall in Düsseldorf on 1 November and the WIR Festival in Halle on 8 November.

99 Nichts Für Immer

The second album, 99 Nichts Für Immer, came out on 19 June 2026 and runs to ten tracks, trailed by the singles Armee, SUVs, Skyline and Dieb. The change in direction is the point of it. Where the debut was dreamy and romantic-melancholic, the band's booking agency describes the new record as a move into what it calls a new sobriety — harder, clearer and more urban.

The persona shuffle encodes the same shift. Nicki Papa and Saiya Tiaw step back; AMANDUS 99 and DANZINGER 99 take over and hold the record more firmly. The promotional copy locates the songs not in abstract soundscapes but on the asphalt of Vienna, Paris and Bucharest, and the band's German booking is handled by Goodlive Artists, with Alwin Schreiber on the desk.

Where the tour stands

The Nichts Für Immer tour was announced in spring 2026 as ten club dates across Austria, Germany and Switzerland: Posthof's small hall in Linz on 20 October, PMK in Innsbruck on the 21st, Grelle Forelle in Vienna on the 22nd, Rote Sonne in Munich on the 24th, Werk 21 at Dynamo in Zürich on the 25th, Im Wizemann in Stuttgart on the 27th, Oetinger Villa in Darmstadt on the 28th, Gebäude 9 in Cologne on the 29th, Frannz Club in Berlin on the 30th and Knust in Hamburg on 1 November. A Ticketmaster presale opened at noon on Friday 10 April 2026, general sale followed on 12 April, and tickets started at €29.90.

Most of that has since been pulled. The Berlin promoter Trinity Music now lists the Frannz Club show of 30 October as abgesagt — cancelled — with refunds available from the point of purchase. Songkick's calendar shows the same status against Linz, Innsbruck, Munich, Zürich, Stuttgart, Darmstadt, Cologne and Hamburg, leaving Grelle Forelle in Vienna on 22 October as the one October date still marked active, alongside a Vienna show at B72 on 4 December 2026 that is also still listed. The band's own live page carries no 2026 dates at all and reads "Derzeit keine Konzerte im Verkauf" — currently no concerts on sale. Neither the band nor the promoters have published a reason for the cancellations.

What the show is now

The 2026 configuration is the biggest the project has used. Braith and Danzinger play as a live quintet, with Stefan Raschbacher on bass, Miriam Jochmann on piano and synthesisers and Moritz Kolmbauer on drums — a line-up the tour announcement says was premiered across the preceding festival summer before being taken into clubs.

The venues chosen say as much about the intended experience as the instrumentation does. Grelle Forelle and Rote Sonne are techno clubs rather than concert halls; Frannz, Knust and Gebäude 9 are mid-sized rooms. The tour copy promises the densest version of the band's world yet, with the longing in the music and the constant play with identity and staging meant to land at the edge of a dancefloor rather than in front of a stage. Published reviews of the quintet's shows are not yet available.