2008 Woodie Awards
Idiot Pilot change it up with a few new additions
Mike Farrell
Issue date: 4/9/08 Section: Arts&Entertainment
When they released their debut album, "Strange We Should Meet Here," in 2005, Idiot Pilot turned heads with their unique amalgamation of screamo and electronic rock, as well as the fact that the entire band only consisted of two members. Now, vocalist Michael Harris and multi-instrumentalist/vocalist Daniel Anderson are touring in support of their latest release, "Wolves." The Chronicle spoke with Anderson in between tour stops on the 2008 Taste of Chaos tour to discuss the band's past, present and future.
Your new album, "Wolves," technically came out in October, but there were a lot of delays in production and physical copies weren't available until February. What happened?
There are so many elements in releasing a record, especially on a major label. Those machines are so big and there's so many people working at them that it's pretty easy for them to not be communicating as easily as like, a small indie label that has 5-10 people working. Every time something came up, something else would halt the project, but all of our ducks are in a row now and our plan of what we want to do with this record is very well defined now, so it's all going very well.
There's a very noticeable change of sound with "Wolves" compared to your first album, "Strange We Should Meet Here." Was this calculated or organic?
When we were recording "Wolves," I was listening back to it and was like, "Wow, this sounds like 'Strange'… part two. I mean, we didn't really define exactly where we wanted to go, but I really did think it was similar. As we went in, it really started to change, so I think those changes are organic and the way it came out is a whole other thing. The only thing planned was we had talked about bringing in our different influences. Our influences have changed, and we wanted to showcase them. With me, I liked the idea of taking the post-rock anthem, like an Explosions in the Sky song or a SigurRos song and comparing and combining that with the U2 anthem or the pop anthem. There are a lot of similarities between those two things, but there aren't a lot of people who notice them. It's the sort of contrast we were going for.
Your new album, "Wolves," technically came out in October, but there were a lot of delays in production and physical copies weren't available until February. What happened?
There are so many elements in releasing a record, especially on a major label. Those machines are so big and there's so many people working at them that it's pretty easy for them to not be communicating as easily as like, a small indie label that has 5-10 people working. Every time something came up, something else would halt the project, but all of our ducks are in a row now and our plan of what we want to do with this record is very well defined now, so it's all going very well.
There's a very noticeable change of sound with "Wolves" compared to your first album, "Strange We Should Meet Here." Was this calculated or organic?
When we were recording "Wolves," I was listening back to it and was like, "Wow, this sounds like 'Strange'… part two. I mean, we didn't really define exactly where we wanted to go, but I really did think it was similar. As we went in, it really started to change, so I think those changes are organic and the way it came out is a whole other thing. The only thing planned was we had talked about bringing in our different influences. Our influences have changed, and we wanted to showcase them. With me, I liked the idea of taking the post-rock anthem, like an Explosions in the Sky song or a SigurRos song and comparing and combining that with the U2 anthem or the pop anthem. There are a lot of similarities between those two things, but there aren't a lot of people who notice them. It's the sort of contrast we were going for.
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