Due to the forthcoming album of the Australian band NEUROPA I got the chance interviewing Albert and Jason of NEUROPA.

Please tell me something about the history of Neuropa.
Where did you meet and how long has Neuropa existed?
Myself and Albert met early on as we went to school together. Our first release was in 1997 under the name Neuropa and "New Faith" took us about two years to write so we formed in about 1995. We were friends before that & did some recording prior to our first release.

What's the meaning of your band name? Where does it come from?
The name Neuropa is derived from the Ultravox song "New Europeans" from the "Vienna" album as we very much like the early 80's electronic sound from Europe.

Concerning your band-name, what kind of connections relations do you have to Europe?
Well it's mainly derived from the idea of Neuro & europe really, as in neuromantic which came in the 80's period. It's evident in our musical style how much we love that era!

What are you doing when you aren't investing your time in music? Do you have other jobs, university? If so, which ones?
When not recording I like to fly radio controlled planes on the weekends & during the week I work as a Business Analyst for a large financial corporation. Albert is very much into graphic arts both professionally and for fun. He also enjoys photography and film editing

What are the sources of your lyrics?
Own experiences, disaffection with existing situations or pure fiction?
Sometimes my song lyrics are personal & driven from experience & at other times they are fictional & just telling a story or conveying an emotion or observation. We both take time to develop our ideas when writing lyrics, its important to have a strong basis to work from.The lyrics are what convey the sentiment in the song so we try to have strong ideas to hold the song together.

I am just listening to your brand-new single "Every Second".
Why have you decided to make very 80s influenced electronic music? Who inspires your music?
"Every Second" was supposed to be a little modern really! We are influenced by Depeche Mode, Erasure, Human League, Ultravox, and more recent stuff like Elegant Machinery, And One & Covenant. We are constantly taking in new influences, both from our past and from modern music makers. We can't help sounding 80's even when we try to sound modern, its part of who we are.

As you make a very special kind of music, do you try to aim reaching any special audience?
I sometimes wonder who might listen to our stuff but really write songs just for its own sake because I like to. We find it difficult to predict who is going to like one song over another; we try to make music that we would enjoy listening to and hope that others will also. I think that's why we vary our sound a little on each album, e.g. on `Beyond Here & Now' we included songs from different styles like `In Need' which had reggae beat in there. I don't like hearing all dance tracks, or all slow stuff you need to have some variety when putting an album together.

I saw you live during the ADD Summer SynthPoP festival in NYC in May 2000.
Is it very important for you to play live and feed off the audience?
I would love to tour again, I love audience interaction but as we are so far away in Australia its not something we can do so often or easily. I really liked talking & meeting people while on tour as there is literally no one in my country into the same kind of music.

As many know Neuropa are from Australia (not Austria and in reverse order J).
How was it able to roll up the American and European SynthPoP scene from a country, where nobody expected any kind of SynthPoP?
We are going against the wave in Australia but I guess many bands are if they are doing this style of music no matter which country they are in. We know that we wouldn't enjoy doing traditional rock or watered down top 40 dance music.We like music with an edge to it; we grew up listening to great bands from the 80's that really knew how to look cool and write fantastic songs.We can't help but to emulate those influences, if people in here don't understand what we're doing then we're lucky that overseas people do!

What are your plans for the future?
When is your new 5th album available?
We are working on the next album & hope to have it ready fairly soon but I'm not sure of an exact release date at present. We'll be posting further information for people on our website and some mp3 clips soon.We're also in the process of giving our site a complete facelift which will include a fan posting forum and more interactivity.We enjoy getting feedback from our fans so hopefully we'll get people interested in participating.

That's all. Thank you very much for the interview, live long and prosper!

Lets enjoy the below full-length MP3 which is an unreleased track taken from their forthcoming album BORN.

• Belief

The copyright in these sound-files is owned by Neuropa, AUSTRALIA. For all files I got the exclusive authorization of Neuropa. All sound-files are only for private use. Any commercial distribution and copy is prohibited.

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