Fighterpilot have finally finished recording their debut Silver Bullet….Plastic Gun and the best thing for music lovers is that it’s free to download from their website. Daniel from the band takes about their new approach to getting their music out world wide.
The release of your debut Silver Bullet….Plastic Gun must make for some exciting times? “Absolutely – it has been a long time coming,” Daniel admitted. “I have been playing with these boys for nearly seven years, and in that time we have done a lot of recording. Silver Bullet… was a real labour of love for us and I suppose being our ‘debut’ full length album it makes it that bit more special. Most of all I am proud of the songs, I think there is some real quality here.”
Is it a bold move making it available for download for free? “I would like to think it is,” Daniel thought. “A number of artists have given away free tracks, but as far as I am aware we are the first to do a whole album. But we all know that people are going to download music, album sales are tiny compared to ten years ago. The problem with illegal downloads is that they are not free, you are paying for your internet connection, your computer, your mp3 player. So you are paying for the ‘content’, its just that you are not paying the band. In this case, we are saying download it legally. We want you to!”
What prompted that decision? “Well, when we were getting to the end of the recording process, which took nearly eighteen months, we sat down as a band and said ‘what do we want to do with this?’ And the overwhelming consensus was that we would do whatever it takes to get it out there. We are very proud of our music and believe that, like any band, it’s the quality of your songs that make the band. I guess it was in the end my idea to give it away as album sales are hard work, physical product is in the decline, but there is still a market for good music, you just need to find your audience. We were giving away a lot of our CD’s at gigs anyway, so why not give them away to a worldwide audience! So for us, the album is about promoting what we do to the widest audience possible, and we hope that through this we will expand our audience and get more people to gigs, which is where we at our best.”
Does that make it harder to recoup the money outlaid of making the album? “We have been fortunate to receive great support from Fat Trax Studios, one of the premier studios in Adelaide, so the album doesn’t owe us that much and what it does, well that’s the investment you have to make if you are serious about your music and believe in yourself.”
Will this approach be the way of the future for a lot of bands? “I really think so,” Daniel believed. “I think there will be more than a few that will wait and see what happens with us. If it works, the floodgates will open, but until issues of ISP’s not paying royalties for downloaded content, it’s going to be a cowboy market.”
If you had your time over is there anything you would do differently? “Start playing my own music younger,” Daniel thought. “I played in a lot of bands playing other peoples music before I met these guys. When myself and Simon (Schell, Guitarist) first sat down together to write a song I knew I had found my band. We just clicked. I only wish we had met when I was 17, not 25.”
Was it a tough choice deciding what the first single will be? “Well, we have been releasing singles from this album from the start of recording, eighteen months ago,” Daniel said. “We released The World Cant Touch Me Back in ought-six which got a lot of radio play for us, both here and overseas, but we didn’t have a product to follow it up so we just kept recording. Then we released Fall To Your Knees as a single earlier in the year, which didn’t have the same impact, but we wanted to get something out to let people know we were still around, and we did get great support from community radio. Wait a While has been getting some good attention from radio over the last couple of months, but we haven’t actually released it as a single. The promo single for the album release is Animal the first track on the album – and we chose it because it is by far the loudest, most in your face track on the album. I guess it’s a good representation of the band and our sound!”
Does the new stuff work in well with the older songs? “We have definitely taken a heavier direction with this album – our first self titled EP had more of an indie rock feel to it, mixed with acoustic numbers and some punky stuff. I don’t think we play anything off that live anymore because we have outgrown the music – we still throw in the odd song off Autorock in the live set. Josh (Biggs, Bass player) writes our set lists, and I have a feeling that he is going to pop in a few of the older numbers for the Album launch at the Uni Bar.”
What can people expect at the launch? “A great live show and a damn good party I would think! The launch for us is about getting together with the people we love and the bands we are mates with and just putting on a great big party. Fear In Dakota are such an awesome live rock band, and we love playing with them. Twelve Dollar Monkey have that great funk element, and even though Nereeda is a bit of a loser we let them hang out with us. Plus the usual giveaways, live sheep auctions, bay window scrubbing and greasy pole climbing competitions you get at any Fightepilot show.”
What’s next on the horizon for Fighterpilot? “Santa’s coming in his ringing sleigh,” Daniel laughed. “Then we are getting back on the road from January with a jaunt through regional Victoria and hopefully a trip to Sydney. We are working on some new material and signed a publishing deal with JL Music Publishing this year which we are hoping will open some doors in 2009. We have had some songs from the album placed in a movie being shot in Hong Kong as we speak. So the future looks bright!”
Fighterpilot luanch their debut album at the Unibar on Friday November 21 with guests Fear in Dakota and Twelve Dollar Monkey. Entry is free.
