ARTICLES
INTERVIEW BY ACTION
ATTACK HELICOPTER MAGAZINE
Interview with Aaron Feibus
by Kurt Morris
PAGE 4
Kurt: What are your live shows like? Do you have a huge lighting system?
Aaron: Nope. That's down the road. We've got plenty of stuff we're paying for right now.
Kurt: Do you wear makeup?
Aaron: Nope. No makeup. We don't want to be a gimmicky type thing. We're not Insane Clown Posse or anything.
Kurt: Oh, well this interview's over--
Aaron: But we are like Slipknot.
Kurt: Good. Which mask do you wear?
Aaron: I've got Shaggy from Scooby Doo and the girls are always tugging on my chin hair.
Kurt: So what ARE the live shows like? I've only been to a few rave type things--
Aaron: No, I wouldn't even consider them a rave type thing. Most of our songs would probably fall under the classification of ballad. I mean, I know how many BPMs they are. Extreme could probably play this song and it wouldn't be a big deal. We're writing the full-length right now and mixing up the tempos. But our live show right now is more or less restricted to the EP and a couple other songs. We have a song we didn't put on the EP and we do a cover of Recover, who are a band on Fueled By Ramen. They're melodic hardcore type stuff. I really enjoy that band and we took one of their hardcore songs and made it into one of our things and it's really cool and really danceable. People seem to really like that one the most out of all of them that we play at our shows, which doesn't say much for our writing capabilities.
Kurt: Do you write the lyrics?
Aaron: I pretty much do the lyrics. Sometimes Steve will help me out if I've got a block and then I'll get going from there. Even if it's something totally unrelated, he'll write things down and I'll look at them and that'll help cure it. Most of the time I sit down and come up with stuff on my own. Whereas with the music, Steve mostly handles that. The writing process is like, "do you like this or this? What sound do you think would work well here?" Most of the bass melodies are already done and along with the lyrics, I do write the vocal melodies and harmonies. It's really a collaboration and we always ask Brad for input for the drum stuff, too. But I think you asked me something about the live show, didn't you?
Kurt: Yeah, somewhere back there. I guess I just didn't know if you stood there or you danced or what you did.
Aaron: Well, that's something we're working on.
Kurt: It's weird because your music isn't aggressive like punk is where you can flail around.
Aaron: It is a lot harder to have a good show. The only other band that people talk about us with in the same sentence is the Faint. They're doing electronic music, too, but most of their stuff is more up tempo and they have five people, whereas we have three. Right off the bat, it's easier for them to have a good show, because if four of them aren't moving, maybe one is. We only have three people to work with, which is fine because I really like a tight knit core to work with anyway. As it is, people could probably move more with the Faint's stuff just because they have that more aggressive element. For us, I think it's very danceable. Originally, when we started playing live, this guy who DJ'd 80s night here in town was playing with us and once in a while he'll still spin us and people will dance to it, so that's cool. It's definitely danceable stuff. I dance, Steve dances and Brad is sitting down, so it's hard for him, but he'll twirl the sticks.
Kurt: Does he have one of those cool electronic drum sets?
Aaron: He does. It's a Roland TD10 head and he has some Roland pads, which if we ever make some money, we're going to upgrade those to the actual Vdrum things which have mesh heads. They look like real drums. We have a lot of neat gear. On some of the new songs I'll be playing guitar as well.
