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Set List 2012: You Choose, We Decide

November 29, 2011 2011 5 Comments

So, one thing I noticed on our last tour was that some songs got a better reaction than others. Interesting! It would seem as if everyone does not like every song exactly the same.

I thought it’d be fun to let you, the listener, help us pick our set for the next tour—this way, there’s a better chance that we’ll play the songs people are most excited to hear. Right now, we have no idea (well, we have some idea with the older songs, but not with the new album). Go ahead and vote for your ideal set list below. You can pick up to 14 songs, because, come on, we’re not going to play more than that. Could you theoretically game the results by entering the poll answers over and over and over again? Sure, but that would make you kind of a loser.

Anyway, let’s just stick to the honor system here. Pick your ideal set, one time. This is a great way for YOU to decide what YOU want to hear! It’s democracy at its best*

*note: if you pick stupid songs, we reserve the right to ignore the results of this poll and play whatever we damn well feel like

OK, let’s do this!

-Nate

[poll id="2"]

November Updates

November 28, 2011 2011, News 0 Comments

Greetings! Time for a quick update. This particular update is all about NEW things.

NEW shows– check out the, you guessed it, Shows page for that. West Coast, we’re heading your way for the first time since 2010. Seattle and Portland? Haven’t seen you since 2008. Vegas? We’ve gambled (on—get this—baseball games) in your fine city, but have never played there… until now. So go check it out and get stoked, ‘cuz we are. Let’s spread the stokage (stokageness?) around.

NEW t-shirts. Check out the Store page. Why not celebrate Cyber Monday by purchasing some new clothing? You get to warm your body, we get to dupe you into being a walking billboard for us. Win win!

NEW photos! Yeah, that’s pretty exciting, right? I’m going to let you guess which link you have to click on to find them.

So there’s the NEW stuff. As for OLD stuff: our tour last month with Dead to Me was a blast; thanks to all the great bands we got to play with and to all the people who came out. And Fest was the best weekend of the year, as always!

-Nate

Interview on Fearless Radio

October 15, 2011 2011, Interviews 0 Comments

Last week in Chicago we sat down before Riot Fest and did an interview with Fearless Radio. If you missed it, you can check out an MP3/Podcast right here

If you didn’t miss it, you can listen again!

-Nate

New Song and New Shows

October 9, 2011 2011, News 0 Comments

As you should already know (unless you haven’t been keeping up with Banner Pilot news, in which case, shame on you; start becoming an informed citizen), our third full length album Heart Beats Pacific is being released by Fat Wreck Chords this October 25th. You can preorder it now at various places like Interpunk, Shopradiocast, Amazon, hell, even Best Buy’s “Classical Music” Store. So please, go order it from one of those places.

You’re probably asking, “Waitaminute, slick. What if it sucks? Then I’ll have wasted my money and have an album I hate. Are you trying to pull a fast one?” Of course not! And tell you what, you can even check out the first song on the record right here at Alternative Press to see if you like it. See? No risk.

Cool. In other news, Riot Fest (Red Bull Riot Fest, to be exact) was a great time. We had a fun show and it was really cool too see All play and meet those guys afterwards. I got a cut on my index finger right before we played and had to utilize my middle finger for the majority of the bass lines. It felt a little like I was flicking the crowd off, but I assure you that was not my intent.

Later this week is our first Minneapolis show in awhile. It’s at the 331 Club as part of the premiere for a new film called The Other F Word. It sounds pretty interesting and you can read more about it here. The show is this Saturday— the film is at 7pm at the Ritz; the show starts at 10pm at the 331.

After that is our tour with Dead to Me to Fest 10; see the Shows page for more info. And once we’re back, we’ll be doing an album release show November 5th at the Turf Club.

Basically, the next month is jam-packed with awesomeness.

-Nate

 

This Autumn (free emo song title right there)

August 15, 2011 2011, News 0 Comments

Hey, how’s your summer been? Not good? That’s awful; sorry to hear that. But I’ve got good news: fall is on the way! And with it we’ll have three cool things going on here in Banner Pilot World (as we call it).

#1: A new album. Our third full length, it’s called Heart Beats Pacific and it comes out October 25th on Fat Wreck Chords. We’re stoked. Read more about it here.

#2. We already announced that we’re doing Riot Fest in early October, and The Fest 10 in late October, and now we can announce (“announce”; that sounds so goofy) that we’ll also be touring the east coast with our pals Dead to Me that month. THEY have a new album coming out on October 25th too, so it’ll be extra awesome. On top of that, October also has us playing shows with great bands like The Flatliners, The Menzingers, Broadway Calls, Off With Their Heads, Nothington, and more. Check out the shows page for more info.

#3. We’ll be playing our record release show in town at the Turf Club when we get back. November 5th. Our new album will be there, it’ll be our first local show in a long time, and we’ll be “tour tight”, as we call it. So you gotta come check it out.

That’s all for now!

-Nate

Useful Information About The New Album

July 31, 2011 2011, News, Studio Diaries 5 Comments

Hey-
Our new full length album is now complete! That’s pretty cool, huh? It’s not “done done”; we mix it this monday through wednesday, and then master it later in the week. But as far as the actual music goes, it’s all wrapped up.

Here, while you wait for it to come out, are some Factoids about the new record:

Number of songs: 11

Number of songs longer than 4 minutes: 1

Number of songs in drop d tuning: 2

Number of songs with piano: 1

(I’m probably freaking some people already, but don’t worry)

Number of minutes the full album is: click here

Number of songs that, in my opinion, sound like Jawbreaker: 1

Number of songs a random person in a suit and tie you stopped on the street would think sound like Jawbreaker if you played them Jawbreaker and then this album back to back: 11

Number of songs ideas written in the first 12 months or so after Collapser wrapped up: 50+, although many of these are just riffs i stitched together, not “songs”

Number of people who would think “This album is…. kinda not so good” if we had used nothing but those songs: everyone

Number of songs written in the last 10 or 11 months that ended up on the record: 9

Number of lessons we can learn from the last 3 factoids: At least one, “It’s a good thing we didn’t rush this album”

Number of days we spent in the studio: 21, once mixing and mastering are done

Number of days Jacques, the engineer, worked from noon to 6AM or later: at least four

Number of songs Zack from Dear Landlord sings backups on: three

Number of times I ate a Con Uovo pizza, which is a pizza with egg, cheese, and black pepper on it, from a nearby restaurant for dinner: some crazy number

Number of times someone made the boneheaded decision to purchase White Castle despite the plethora of outstanding food establishments within a short walk from the studio: Only 1, I think!

Number of days I biked to the studio: 17 so far, with 4 days left

Number of days I was stoked to be biking to the studio, and not shivering my way home in sub-zero stupidity, staring at the ice beneath my feet, like I did last January when recording In Desolation at the same studio: Every Single Day

Number of album covers I designed before we finally found one everyone liked: 15+

Number of album titles we had before settling on one everyone liked: 1

So there you have it! Now you have a pretty good understanding of this album. Look for more info — the album cover, tracklisting, some MP3s, a release date, etc etc — in the weeks and months to come. For now, i’m stoked to get this mixed/mastered!

-Nate

Studio Blog #1 : Deadly Towers

June 25, 2011 2011, Studio Diaries 0 Comments

Here’s an interesting thing about being in the studio: the first couple days of being in a studio aren’t very interesting. I’m not sure how I can convey any intriguing updates; “Hey, guys, quick update: we nailed that one fill!” or “After trying a few different options we decided the ping cymbal works best because of the outro section”…… not really that mind-blowing. So I guess I’ll just talk about what we’re doing between songs for now.

We brought back in the same hacked X-Box we used for Collapser and have started revisiting some truly awful NES games. As of right now we’re playing the game Deadly Towers while waiting to record the next song, which has the dummy title ‘Neon’. Perhaps some of the game will slightly influence our playing of the song, and months from now you’ll be like, “That one drum fill reminds me of a guy trying to kill a weird blue slime.”

Yesterday we ordered pizza from this place that specializes in weird toppings (Mac and Cheese Pizza, Burrito Pizza, etc), and came up with a great idea: Gum Pizza! Instead of sauce and cheese, it’s all gum. Your pizza would last forever.

OK, you must be getting pretty stoked to hear this album by now. I’ll keep the updates coming. Within a couple days they’ll be sounding more like actual songs and I’ll have more relevant info to report!

-Nate

We are Recording a New Album!

June 23, 2011 2011, News, Studio Diaries 0 Comments

Hey, later today Banner Pilot is entering the studio to record a new full length album. Yeah! We’re recording at the Terrarium with Jacques Wait, same as with Collapser, so it should sound totally sweet. Look for updates from the studio, right here, starting tomorrow or Saturday!

-Nate

 

Welcome to the new Banner Pilot webpage

June 23, 2011 2011, News 0 Comments

Hey, thanks for checking out the new Banner Pilot site. “Why does this exist?”, you ask? Well, I got sick of having a bunch of small, scattered sites for the band that all did a single thing (some better than others). This way, just about everything is one convenient spot.

It would look pretty lame and pathetic if the entire website started off with nothing but this dorky “Hey, welcome! C’mon in!” post you’re reading right now, so I decided to move all of our old updates/tour diaries/studio diaries/you name it here, too (stuff from our Myspace/Tumblr/Blogspot/whatever pages). This way, there’s a ton of old content to sift through. Some of it is old and irrelevant, but rather than pick through it for the best stuff, I just added all of it.

Everything else should be pretty self-explanatory. Take a look around, make yourself at home

-Nate

PS- Why “Bannerpilot.net”? Yeah, I know. Trust me, dot com would have been better, but whoever owns it doesn’t even have it for sale, and has no way of being contacted. I was super tempted by the cheaper options — Bannerpilot.Info, so catchy; Bannerpilot.biz; so professional — but decided .net was the best bet. So there you go.

PPS – if you are a banner pilot, and found this website while searching for a job, I have nothing to offer you. But you should totally buy one of our t-shirts! A banner pilot wearing a Banner Pilot t-shirt, that would be so badass! Click on ‘store’ up top

 

A Brief History of Banner Pilot and the Internet

June 20, 2011 2011, Randomness 0 Comments

First, in 2005, there was Banner-Pilot.com

It was a pretty lousy website, but it did the trick. The message board proved to be awesome. It soon became nothing but spam bots talking to each other. Literally. Check out an archive.

Soon enough something called MySpace came along. “Finally, we can add blinking lights and glitter and glitches to our website!” we, along with thousands (millions?) of other bands thought. Actually, as awful as Myspace is — it is just a pile of garbage at this point — it was pretty slick at first. An easy way to post songs… people could communicate with you directly (“OMG FREE iPOD MINI CLICK HERE TAKE SURVEY!” and so on), you could post upcoming shows…. and with that, Banner-Pilot.com had no reason to exist and died of neglect, before finally getting an awesome facelift under new ownership. “What you need, when you need it”…. at least they kept our slogan.

Myspace worked OK for awhile, say, 2005-2009 (damn, that’s actually a pretty long time!) but its inner core of crap become more and more apparent over the years. So, since that time we have (like most bands nowadays) had a mixture of different sites: Facebook (for short updates that disappear one week later), Twitter (I think Twitter is awesome but it’s obviously limited), Bandcamp (for tunes), Tumblr (for longer posts), Storenvy (to sell shit), and probably more I’m forgetting. Some of those, particularly Bandcamp and Twitter, are really really awesome sites. But it still feels kind of disjointed. Thus: BannerPilot.net. A way to centralize some of this shit. That’s the slogan of this website!

-Nate

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