Blog with Sidebar | Banner Pilot - Part 8
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June 26, 2011 In General

Studio Blog #2: The Reverse Crunch Wrap

Well it’s day three and we have five songs tracked; probably will get one more done before the end of the day. A little slower than expected, but it’s sounding pretty great. We listened to Collapser for a second to double check a snare sound and these new songs already sound better as-is than that record. So, we might just call it a day and have a rad 5 song instrumental record. Or maybe not.

One thing demo-ing and recoding songs has reminded me about is the awesome names we have for various drum parts. You definitely know what a roll is, and you might know what a Taco is (snare/bass drum, snare/drum drum… this intro is an example). But do you know what a Burrito is? A Reverse Crunch Wrap? A Fruit Rollup? Those are all legitimate drum parts we have. Maybe for the next studio blog we’ll do a video where we play each part, and you try to guess what each part is. First person to get it right, and explain why, gets a free t-shirt (or maybe nothing if we’re low on shirts.) Look for it later this week!

Ok, back to recording/Super Mario Brothers now!

-Nate

June 25, 2011 In Studio Diaries

Studio Blog #1 : Deadly Towers

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

June 20, 2011 In News

A Brief History of Banner Pilot and the Internet

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 stuff), 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 stuff. That’s the slogan of this website!

-Nate

June 17, 2011 In News

New Album (well, sort of) This Fall on Fat!

Originally Posted 7/29/10 on Myspace

Big news! Our album Resignation Day has been remixed and remastered and is coming out on Fat Wreck Chords September 14th! This isn’t some mild “We boosted the gigawatts on the 128kbs range blah blah” or whatever– this is a dramatic improvement. It sounds sorta like Collapser now. Plus we added two out of print songs, changed the layout, and even re-sequenced it a little. Get stoked, people.

Here’s some background info I wrote for Fatwreck.com:

When we originally recorded Resignation Day back in 2007, issues came up during the recording that left us with little time for mixing. As a result, the record didn’t sound too hot. This was kind of a drag ‘cuz we didn’t feel like we did the songs justice. But! Sometimes you get a second chance; sometimes you can take something that was subpar and make it right, like when that Jason Mraz guy covered Blitzkrieg Bop. In our case, we were able to get Jacques Wait (who we worked with on our last album Collapser) to take a look at the original tracks and take a stab at remixing them. What he came up with was awesome, sounding like a new album. Usually something billed as a ‘remix’ will cause you to say “Uh, I guess the guitars are…. warmer now?” or “Oh, that’s cool that the ride cymbal has more zing in that one part now. Glad I bought this again”, but in this case we’re talking about a dramatic difference. Plus we added two more songs that are out of print, re-did the layout, and even changed around the sequencing. It’s like a whole new experience, maaan.

So if you checked out the album the first time around and didn’t dig it, give it another chance. We think you’ll like it. It’s like that one fairy tale where the first bowl of porridge kind of sucks but the second one is perfect.

– Nate