With a début album out in November, Pilotlight are in Camden Town this weekend to launch their latest single Afraid of Heights. In advance of the gig at Monto Water Rats, we caught up with Mick from the band…..
Your début album Post War Musical is out at the beginning of November, how long did it take you to get to this point?
We’ve been playing together in some form or other since we were kids. Pilotlight happened in about 2006 and we began work on the album in 2008. We released it earlier this year in Ireland, where we hail from, and we’re just about to get it out here through Glasstone Records. Its been a pretty long journey with plenty of highs & lows, too many to mention here – come along to the gig and we’ll bore you to tears with the stories!!
If you could pick only gigging OR recording/writing what would you opt for?
It’d have to be writing & recording, we’re happiest together as a band at the moment when while writing it all comes together, there’s the glance around the room and we know we’ve hit something that moves us. If the music is good enough to inspire people to come to see us play then its a pretty huge bonus.
Post War Musical and Pilotlight are pretty intriguing names/titles? What made you decide on them?
Essentially the Post War Musical, was a project introduced by the government after the Second World War in order to boost morale, by pushing people towards the arts in a time of devastation. We felt this rang through with alot of the themes of the album. The name Pilotlight puts us in mind of new ideas & beginnings and the time we chose the name it was that for the band both musically and personally.
Do you have a favourite track on the album?
It changes all the time, at the moment I’m really enjoying Letting Balloons Go, its a good song for when the weather changes like this.
So, looking ahead to the gig, will there be any new material that fans haven’t heard yet?
We’ll be playing a track called Still Point Of My Turning World that’s still in its infancy and really exciting for us to do live. Hopefully we’ll be getting in to the studio to do a follow up EP to the album pretty soon and I think that’s a definite for it.
If you could pick another artist’s song, is there one song that you wished you has written?
So many… the film Control was on the TV just a few nights ago so it has me on a bit of a Joy Division buzz just at the moment – Love Will Tear Us Apart is such a classic.
It is getting colder, any chance you would consider releasing a Christmas single?!
Wouldn’t mind doing a version of Fairytale in New York but something tells me the original will never be beaten, despite Ronan Keating’s sorry attempts… As far as us doing a Christmas single, I’m not sure if we’re quite jolly enough to be honest, it might end up being a bit downer for the season of cheer!
Thanks to Mick from Pilotlight. To see Mick and the rest of the Pilotlight guys in action, get yourself down to Monto Water Rats on Saturday 2nd October. It looks set to be a great gig.
The Camden Store Team X
