We've kind of been crushing on Electric Youth lately, in a completely platonic-we-really-really-dig- the-tunes kind of way. Their sound is fresh and upbeat. and we're completetly convinced that they're destined for great things. With less than a year making music together under their belts (they've written for other artists in the past), they've managed to churn out some amazing work.


Let's get it started!

We're new to the sounds of Electric Youth, as are our readers. From your MySpace, it looks like you are middle school sweethearts still together! Tell us a bit about how you met and how you came to the point where you decided to make music together.
We met when we were 10 years old at school. As for making music together, earlier this year we were watching a Nu Shooz video who were a husband/wife duo and a light bulb went on.


Did you both have musical backgrounds growing up, or was there ever a time when music wasn't at the forefront and you said, "When I grow up, I want to be a [xxx]"
Yeah, music was always at the forefront for Austin, and with Bronwyn, she was that little girl who wanted to be a singer one day, but we never really thought we'd be involved in something together like this until recently.


Who / what do you get inspiration from?
As individuals, a lot of different things, but as for what we do as a group, we get a lot of inspiration from the successes of teams like Stock Aitken Waterman, Boy Meets Girl (career wise not relationship wise), Nu Shooz and the longevity of artists like Janet Jackson, Madonna and Kylie Minogue.


Are you influenced by mainstream media or what is considered "popular music"?
For sure. We think anyone who would say they're not would be lying. When we chose the name Electric Youth, we knew some people would relate it to the Debbie Gibson song and we were comfortable with that, to us it says we're not afraid of "pop music" or being pop. We feel like being "Anti-pop" is pretty played out and old at this point and the whole concept of Indie vs Mainstream is pretty gimmicky. To us, at the end of the day good music is good music whether its heard by 1 or 1 million. And for every song that becomes popular because of some silly gimmick, there's a song that becomes popular simply because it's a great song and we aim to be a part of the latter.

The "popular music" of right now is beginning to sound more and more like what we heard in the 80s, and we're happy with that because to us the best music came from that era and so it allows us to let that be a part of the music we make while still being something a broad spectrum of music listeners can relate too for 2008 and the future.



What is your take on mp3 blogs? Helpful or harmful to a release, an artist, a career?
We were reading about this study that was done recently that found an undeniable, direct correlation between an artist's buzz on blogs prior to the release of an album and the success of the album. It proved that statistically, mp3 blogs are very helpful. Where they can become harmful though is with mp3 blogs that lack integrity and post certain songs an artist does not want to make available that way, further contributing to illegal downloading issues. For the most part though, mp3 blogs, at least the noble ones, seem to be doing more help than harm. So far, pretty much every blog that has posted our songs had approached us beforehand about doing so, and much of that has already contributed to a really great and strong response to what we're doing, in a pretty short time so thank you mp3 blogs!


Give us 3 songs you can't live without, 2 food / meals to die for, and 1 guilty pleasure.
Well there's certain artists that stay on permanent rotation with us, but as for 3 songs we can't live without right now:

3. Lifelike's Relation Remix
2. A song that isn't released yet from College's album coming out in November
1. For Bronwyn: Beatles - Hey Jude / For Austin: This Japanese song that I don't know the English title of.

As for the 2 foods, thank you for asking this question! Because you asked, we just looked into what the latest was on our favorite food of all time, Szechuan Shredded Beef from Chung King on Spadina (not Peter's Chung King but the one with the yellow sign) in Toronto, which was sadly closed down a while back, but now we just found out they have a new location in a nearby town called Markham! For the second food it's definitely our Chung King substitute, the Orange Beef from Le Chinois Restaurant in Hamilton. As for our 1 guilty pleasure it will definitely be driving out to Markham for the Szechuan Shredded Beef!



If you could have the ultimate bill, where would you be playing (city / venue) and who is your opening act?
That's a tough one. It's hard to say. Maybe the places we've been getting the biggest response, like somewhere in France, Spain or Italy...with Giorgio Moroder.

Many thanks to Electric Youth for hooking us up with the interview and the completely mondo boss tracks! Visit them on their Space.

mp3: Electric Youth - Faces
mp3: Electric Youth - Replay
mp3: Electric Youth - Replay (Bestrack Remix)