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What are your names? / Who plays what? / How old are you?

Gabriel Antoine Vallée - Lead vocals, acoustic guitar - Age 23

Gabriel Cyr - Lead guitars, Back vocals - Age 22 

Francis Grégoire – Keyboards, Back vocals - Age 23

Dominic Tapin-Brousseau - Bass - Age 25 

Philippe Pouliot - Drums - Age 28 

How is it that you started playing music? We first started in 2010 as an instrumental band, jamming for fun and playing progressive rock and metal covers of bands, such as Liquid Tension Experiment, Planet X and Dream Theater. We eventually wrote a first draft of an instrumental composition and began to look for a singer. Gabriel Antoine was studying jazz guitar at the same college as Gabriel Cyr but was also a talented singer and liked progressive metal, so we’ve managed to audition him. He completed the formation in 2012 and Universe Effects was now officially a full band.

Have you had other previous members? No, this is the original lineup.  

Have any of you played in other bands? All members have other projects but Universe Effects is one of the most satisfying creatively speaking. 

Did you make music even when you were young?

Francis started learning classical piano when he was 7. Dominic also began taking piano lessons when he was 7, but switched to bass in high school.

Gabriel first played the bass when he was 11 and then began learning the guitar at 12. Gabriel Antoine started playing guitar when he was 10 and Philippe received his first drum kit when he was 15.

Where are you from? Quebec City, Canada

What year did the band form? 2012

What's your style of genre? Progressive rock/metal

What inspires you? The band is inspired by many genres of music such as classical, movie and video games score music, jazz, rock, metal and progressive music.

How often and where do you rehearse?  We rehearse in our hometown in Quebec, once a week. 

How have you developed since you started with the music? Working together gave us the opportunity to always push ourselves to be better musicians in order to develop the band's musicianship, but also to always try to improve our work ethic and the band's chemistry. Being the best musician in the world means nothing if you have issues collaborating with people! 

Do you have other interests of work outside the band? Even besides the band, we gravitate towards the music industry. Francis, Gabriel and Gabriel Antoine are professional musicians and Dominic is a guitar maker, which is pretty useful in a band.

Are you looking for a booking agency, and what are your thoughts around that? We aren’t actively looking for a booking agency for the moment, but we might consider it in the future.

Are you looking for a label, and what are your thoughts around that? We haven’t looked for a label yet. We are not closed to the idea but for the moment, we prefer to learn the workings of music industry by ourselves. If a big label were approaching us, we would certainly consider it. 

What made you decide to make this music? We all listen to a lot of diversified music but we first met through our passion for progressive music. It has always been the music we wanted to create together. Our music is the amalgam of all our musical tastes and it results in our own style. 

What are your songs about? Our songs are based on different concepts. On our debut album, we liked to exploit humanist concepts. For instance, Equilibrium is about finding a balance in life. We can understand through the lyrics that too much of anything isn't good for anyone. Tormented is about a man who has always had difficulties finding out who he truly was, which will eventually lead him to become a stalker/psychopath. In the end, he'll realize that the answers to all his questions were hidden within himself, which he can't admit. 

Who does the composing and writes the lyrics? We prefer to compose the instrumental parts as a group. It’s a longer process but we usually reach to a consensus easily on the direction of the songs. In the end, the result is really satisfying! For the lyrics, the band usually brainstorms on the subjects and the stories that we want to tell. From the ideas discussed, Francis and Gabriel Antoine will write down the lyrics.

Do you start with the music or the lyrics? It really depends. Sometimes we like to get inspired by the lyrics to write the music and determine the mood and the form of the song. If we already have some strong instrumental ideas, like some good melodies, chord progressions or riffs (etc.), the song will naturally take shape and the lyrics will be written afterwards, even though we often have a general idea of the story or the theme of the song.

Do you compose in a certain environment? We have a rehearsal room where we meet every week to work on different stuff, but most of the composition is happening at a cottage in the woods. We usually go there for a week thrice a year and the atmosphere is very conducive to creativity.

Have you done any covers live? We haven’t played any covers live yet, but we're trying to integrate one or two iconic prog songs to our set on our upcoming shows.

What language do you sing in? We only write lyrics in English.

What are the least and most people to attend one of your gigs? For the least, we would say around 15 people. The most we've had is 400 people at our opening act for Symphony X in Quebec City. 

What ages are most of your concert attendants? We would say mainly between 20 and 40 years old. 

Do you always play the same songs live, or do you vary? It depends on how much time we have to play our set. When we play on bills with 3 or 4 bands we often have only 30 or 45 minutes to do our set. We choose the pieces that fit with the global sonority of the evening. If we play with metal bands we will adapt our set with songs like Entropy or Out of the Darkness, but if we play with rock/ambient prog bands it will change. When we have the opportunity to do a full set, we play our first album In the Haze that Surrounds Us entirely. On our next shows, we’re going to add some new material and maybe, like we previously mentioned, a few covers to our repertoire. 

What was your first gig like? The first show with UFX was in February 2015 in Quebec City. It was a very exciting moment to finally play our music live on stage. There were almost 300 people who reserved us a warm welcome, eager and curious to see us live for the first time!

What was your latest gig? We were the opening act for Symphony X. It was a fantastic experience! 

Where have you played live this year? 2016 has been a small year for us on the live aspect. We only played 3 times in Quebec City. We focused on composition and the production of our live session videos.

Where do you plan to gig the coming year? We will certainly play again in Quebec City, but we will also play in Montreal, Toronto and maybe in the United States. Moreover, we will be playing at the 13th edition of Terra Incognita’s Prog Festival in Quebec City next May.

When did you start to sell merchandise, and what do you have for sale? We launched in February 2015 a transactional site (universeeffects.ca) where t-shirts and CDs can be bought.

Where can people buy your merchandise? They can get t-shirts and physical copies of In The Haze That Surrounds Us at our band’s website (universeeffects.ca), where we ship worldwide. For those who are from Europe, you can buy physical copies through our retailer in Germany: Just For Kicks Music (https://www.justforkicks.de/detail.asp?sid=2333202M70N81N140N131&uid=0&id=20701&lid=1).  Our music is also available in digital format for download at multiple web platforms such as ITunes, Google play and Amazon.com. You can also stream our music on Spotify.

What do you think about people downloading music instead of buying records now a days? The best way to support a band or an artist that you like is sure is to buy their albums, merchandise and to go see them live! Maybe music download helps in a way to spread the music, but only visibility isn’t helping a band to subsist. Making and producing an album is a lot of work, dedication and costs a lot of money. For self-productions like our album, In the Haze that Surrounds Us, buying the music helps us to continue to invest into future recordings, shows and making new material. We are truly grateful to the people who support us!

Do you have any role models or idols? The band have respect for many artists and but we don't especially have idols.  

Is it easier to find inspiration from older bands, or bands that are more active today? We find inspiration from both, but because of our age and the music we grew up with, it is most likely the active bands that provide us the inspiration.

What have been your biggest obstacles? Reaching the audience is something that is always challenging and should never be taken for granted. We are always looking for ways to improve the quality of our material, the distribution of it and its promotion, in order to grow a fan base.

What advice would you give other bands or artists? Do the music that you love with people that you trust. 

Do you have any new material? We're currently working on our second album, but we can't confirm when it'll be ready yet.

What are your web sites?  You can find us at www.universeeffects.ca, www.facebook.com/universeeffectsband/ and https://twitter.com/UniverseEffects

How can people reach you? They can either email us at [email protected] or contact us on our facebook page www.facebook.com/universeeffectsband/

What are your plans for the future? We will begin the recording of our next album in 2017. We don’t have any release date for the moment, but we aim for 2018.  Apart from this, we want to expand our worldwide audience and share our music with more and more people. Finally, we would like to play on a regular basis and maybe start touring after our second album.