Page 20 - ROCKNATION ISSUE 26

PAGE 20 ROCKNATION ISSUE 26

Hello AFFÄIRE and welcome to Rocknation. Congrats on your new album titled “Less Ain’t More” released on Perris
Records. Please name some of the tracks and what they are about.
Hi there! It’s great to be on these pages! I have to begin exactly right from the start, the first track, called “Paradise Café”, inspired by
a Spectrum cult videogame with the same name that came up in our country, Portugal, in 1985. I can also highlight “Girls Nite Out”
whose title is pretty much self-explanatory and, in my opinion, one of the best choruses from this album. Also, “Nasty But True” and
“Wild Romance” are true shameless rockers. There is also room for a couple of more-groovy or even mid-tempo tunes, like “Southbay
Blues” and “Sidewalk to a Red Light”. Overall, there is enough variety but, more important, no compromise at all to any kind of trends
or pseudo-modern hypes. Only pure Hard Rock allowed here. Let me also mention “Unsung Heroes (2 Good 4 Hollywood”), our
homage to the underground heroes who kept carrying the true rock and roll torch through history, especially when it became less
popular. And this includes bands, fans and even some media and independent labels

Let’s talk a little about the history of your band. When did you originally form and is this the original line-up?
The idea to form a band like this already existed in my mind many years before AFFÄIRE actually started to happen. By 2010 I started
to put up this band and talking to people interested in doing this and in the Summer of 2011 we officially appeared, releasing our debut
single “Born Too Late”. This record was released only in 7” vinyl, on a limited edition of 300 hand numbered copies. From that line-up
we still have me and Rick. Our singer D. D. Mike joined the band right on time to record “At First Sight”, which was released in 2015.
Tawny, the bass player, who was already a band fan, is playing with us for over 2 years now. He joined us during the recordings of our
2017 EP “Neon Gods”.

What would you say is different in writing and recording “Less Ain’t More” compared to your last CD “At First Sight”?
Our CD “At First Sight” was written during a 4-years period, including line-up changes. It will always be a special album for us and we
still love to play many of those songs live. It’s hard to compare but maybe this time we had better conditions to be more focused on
writing and recording, since step one: a steady line-up, a better studio and a producer that worked close to the band even before
pre-production stage.

How do you feel the band has evolved musically and personally from the last album?
It’s undeniable that the years from one album to the other not having to deal with line-up crisis, playing live, rehearsing, recording
and strengthening our bonds end up making this machine tighter and even more focused. We never had an easy life playing this type
of music and, more than playing it, assuming ourselves with a style that doesn’t fit the “comfortable” genres of modern day. We look
around at the alternative scene and what we see is mostly indie/lame/stoner rock or then extreme metal bands. Truth is take makes us
even more proud and loyal to do what we do. I think that this album shows that. We don’t want to fit in. That’s too boring in the music
industry of 2019. This is the music we love to do and the sub-culture/lifestyle we’re part of. This is not about making rock and roll and
trying to be part of the herd at the same time. You have to actually live it too. We never had any doubts but today we are even more
stubborn and irreducible about it.

If you had to tell someone what AFFÄIRE sounded like, what bands would you mention?
We don’t want to reinvent the wheel but we’re also not into being a tribute act.If you listen to any of our records, it won’t take long to
find out what type of music we play, but I’m sure you won’t think that we sound like band “X” or band “Y”. If I have to put it in a
handful of words I’d say 80s inspired Hard Rock. Trying to expand it a little more,
we have influences from sub-genres like Sleaze, Punk Rock, Heavy Metal and
Melodic Rock. Then, we blend it our own way never trying to sound like any
particular band. But I know that name dropping helps in this case, so I’d pick L.A.
Guns, WASP, Aerosmith, early Guns n Roses, Vain, Alice Cooper, Shark Island,
Zodiac Mindwarp… I could easily name 10 or 20 more bands that inspire us in one
way or another, even digging deep in the underground, but now that would become
boring for you!