ARTISTS

THE AMAZING PILOTS
Hello My Captor
cat:DECOR006CD
Release Date: May 30th 2005

The Amazing Pilots are two brothers, Paul and Phil Wilkinson, who started playing music just after tea most nights. They hatched a plan to travel from their small town in Ireland and record music somewhere up ahead. Forming a band, they traveled to the sunny and jaded south coast of England where they holed up in a big house quite near the beach. The guitars started ringing, and the journey seemed to play along.

A few months later, with a self-financed EP (“Graduate Blood”) under their belt, the band began playing wherever they were wanted, and some others venues as well! The NME got a demo from somewhere, presumed it was a single and reviewed it as such. They said it was “deserving of no small amount of awe”!  It wasn’t long before the Pilots signed a recording deal with London based Easy!Tiger/City Slang Records (Calexico, Wheat) and set about demo-ing over 30 songs for possible inclusion on their debut album.

The band were then invited to record a track for City Slang’s Lee Hazlewood tribute album. And so their 1st commercial release saw them sit alongside the likes of Evan Dando, Lambchop and Jarvis Cocker- the boys were invited to open up for Lee in Dublin’s Olympia Theatre. A publishing contract with Chrysalis Music followed in 2002 and all looked rosy for the band.

It’s a heartbreaker for any young band to find out that their record company has to fold, just two weeks before the release of their first single. The Pilots, however, muttered something about journeys and went off to record their own debut single gaining Single of the Week in London’s The Independent with significant regional and national airplay.

It was soon after this that the brothers heard about a strange studio in a small Midwest town a few hours from Chicago … from a friend of a friend, naturally! A plan was hatched, and they traveled to meet many strange characters, play many strange old instruments and return with knowing grins and strange jackets.

The album was mixed by Mercury-nominated producer David Odlum whose credits include The Frames, Josh Ritter and Gemma Hayes (who also guested some vocals on the record). It was started in Dublin and completed in Black Box Studios in the Loire Valley, France. It’s the songs, melodies and irresistible hooks that the Pilots have made their own, now matched with the weight and dark-edged beauty of a truly stunning debut album which is to be released on the DÉCOR label which is the home to alt country heroes Richmond Fontaine and previously Galway’s finest Cane141. The band have just recently finished supporting American Music Club on their reunion tour and are headed off to the USA for some dates in support of the album release there. Look for a full European tour in May and the album everywhere.