INTERVIEW BY INVISIBLE YOUTH

Not too long ago, Fueled By Ramen Records released an EP that was not quite their usual style of music. The band, calling themselves The Æffect, brought forth a sort of 80s dance revival that is not to be missed. Here is what frontman Aaron Feibus had to say when quizzed about the band and their music.

IY: It's fairly apparent I think, from listening to your CD that you like 80's electronic pop, the likes of New Order and Depeche Mode. Do you consider your music "retro" or "neo-wave," as some have dubbed this resurfacing genre?

A: We had coined some clever term for our music but I can't even remember what it was now. Something cute like "now wave" or "hot flapjack electro-craze." You could probably find it in another interview somewhere if it really meant all that much to you. I think the real question is why is music of this type "resurfacing?" What ever became wrong with it where it had to just go away for 10 years? I must have been around 5 when I started playing with things that go beep and haven't stopped for the last 18.

IY: Your music seems to contain more layers than you have members. Do you find it difficult to reproduce your recorded material in the live setting?

A: The layers are not a problem. One of our keyboards is a sequencer in which everything was originally, manually played by Steve. Nothing is programmed, only stored and played back.

IY: Being that a predominantly punk label has released your CD and that you surely play to a predominantly punk-based crowd a large amount of the time, do you find your band being accepted well?

A: That's a good question. Yes, we have played to predominantly punk crowds I'd say all but once. That once was when we played with The Faint in Gainesville here. I'd say it's obvious that some people at the shows aren't into it. That's cool with us. People love it and people hate it and that's better than having someone just not pay attention to it at all.

IY: So far, The Æffect has only released an EP. Any future plans for releases in the works?

A: Yeah the EP was sort of this, "should we do it now or should we wait and do the full length" dilemma. We decided to go ahead and do the EP so that people would have heard of us by the time our full length was out and we didn't put 10 songs worth of work into introducing ourselves to the world. Our introduction is brief, yet thorough enough to build expectations for the future. We decided we hate expectations and now I'll be playing guitar on the full length.

IY: You've sort of pulled a Prince move with your name. Every major music publication had to add his symbol name thing to their character set to even write anything about him. By having that crazy "Æ" character at the beginning of your band's name, you make it difficult to type it out, alphabetize my CD collection, etc. So why such a unique name that causes so much trouble for us fans?

A: The name came from a brainstorming session, in which it was spoken aloud, but we couldn't decide on one form or the other so we just decided it would be easier for us to combine the two. After all, even though it's a pain to put your CDs in order, it all comes down to what's easy for us, doesn't it? Hopefully a major music publication will write about us one day so we can see just how much of a pain in the ass it is for them. Æ is a regular character in most font sets, however, unlike Prince's unpronounceable glyph.

IY: Any final comments to close out this interview?

A: Thanks and spread the word.