Published: 16 Mar 2018
183
- The Pilotwings

A psychedelic trip with one of Lyon's most infamous duos.

Breaking all the rules since first appearing on the scene in 2012 with their Agorespace EP for local Lyon label Brothers From Different Mothers, The Pilotwings aka Guillaume Lespinasse and Louis De La Gorce have become synonymous with hi energy live electronic music ranging from house, disco and Zouk, to harsher breakbeat and rave styles across the entire tempo and vibe spectrum. Never quite knowing what to expect next from the tongue in cheek French duo, they’ve recently put out a killer EP for the BFDM label run by their close pal and confidant Judaah, and have taken this mix on a one way trip to a 90s psychedelic utopia featuring some cult psybient classics alongside some of their own forthcoming material.

Hey guys, what’s been happening? I see you’ve had a nice start to the year with a new EP full of early euphoric house and breakbeats dropping on Judaah’s Brothers From Different Mothers.. what can you tell us about the idea and inspiration behind that one?

Hey, we had a great begining for 2018, especially this month with the BFDM016 release party in Lyon. A night with our beloved friends Caissard DJ & Lastrack. Everything went so mad… Traditional BFDM celebration haha! So we had some time off during the end of last summer. Basically, we just spent time in the studio putting all the ideas we’d gently been saving in our minds during the summer gigs. And our brains were really packed. We sent all the tracks to the boss of it all, Judaah, and he selected these 4 soft house songs. It was cool to finally create a full Ushuaïa-ish EP. Nothing goes raw or brutal here. This is like a tribute to Italian house records of the 90’s. Classic shit on DFC like Morenas, Sueño Latino, Ramirez etc…

Last time we crossed paths was just after your live set at Golden Plains festival here in Melbourne last year, which I’m guessing may have been one of your biggest live shows to date? How did you guys find that whole experience?

The whole trip in Australia had been overwhelming. Shouts to the Animals Dancing crew for letting us discover and eat so much. Golden Plains festival was the peak – we played next to The Specials in front of 7000 people. Before the live set we asked for some smoke on the first track and then the biggest fog appeared and stayed for a while, feeling like a Mylène Farmer show. We still think it fucked the TR-707 up though.

You’ve mentioned in a previous interview about reaching a bit of a turning point in your productions around the time you made your first EP, with ‘Cours-La-Ville’ recorded in just one take. Has this kind of spontaneous approach with gear since become key to you guys achieving some of the more ambitious or out-there results in the studio?

Whether it’s on the keyboards, percussion on microphone, we use a lot of live recording. Actually we can’t even say ‘while sitting in the studio’ because there is no seat in there… It’s the hardest thing to make programmed tracks feel alive so we play a lot by hand. The difference between when we made our first EP and now is that we got better gear and soundcards allowing us to work on the details. We’re also getting more and more meticulous about mixing the tracks and giving space and dynamic to the music.

On that note, I know you’ve talked about being drawn to ridiculous music made in the most beautiful way possible – referencing bands like Yellow Magic Orchestra and Yello as pioneers of that kind of style. What was it about them that stuck with you so much, and are there any modern day artists (apart from yourselves) that you think are also doing this well?

Well, what can we say? They are simply amazing bands. We totally fell in love with these eighties aesthetics combining genius music production and stupid lyrics & sounds. The most impressive is how they change the musical style on each track during an LP, yet everything remains coherent. Nowadays, There are a lot of artists doing this well, with tons of influences and using different means of production. In the electronic scene, we can recommend Jan Schulte (aka Wolf Müller) and Andrea Noce. Everybody should listen to Wolf Müller’s Instrumentalmusik von der Mitte der World, with his friend Niklas Wandt. And of course Andrea’s latest LP as Eva Geist called Desfan. They are now really good friends and we hope we’re gonna make music with them soon. In a more pop-ish sound, there’s the Russian singer Kate NV. Most of her productions sounds like YMO’s instrumentals. Total respect!

What can you tell us about this mix? Any tracks in there you would like to mention?

The mix focuses on 90s psybient, the esoteric cousin of Goa. It features a few tracks from the cult leftfield labels em:t and Silent. We were also confident enough to throw two forthcoming Pilotwings tracks in… A special mention has to be given to Antiloop for obvious reasons – In my mind. In the end this must be the most psychedelic recording we did!

What’s coming up next for you guys?

We’re gonna improve more and more our top five star jet set lifestyle! We just confirmed four tracks for an EP about 2 weeks ago. Two of them featured on this mix. We can’t say more about it except it’s gonna be abroad! First time we are doing a release outside of France, things are going serious! Besides That, we are still working in the studio. Slowly thinking about a new LP… No teasing here haha..


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