Pittsburgh, PA's Ex Pilots visited the WYSO studios for a live performance and interview with Midday Music's Evan Miller, on the heels of their latest album "Motel Cable."
The band is opening for Ohio lo-fi legends Guided By Voices (GBV) during their annual Heedfest anniversary celebrations. "Realistically, if I could have seen that show poster when I was 14, I would have been like,'OK, doing this will all be worth it. Eventually, it'll pay off one day." said singer and guitarist Ethan Oliva.
Before the advent of digital multi-tracking indie artists would record at home with multi-track cassette decks. Part of GBV's splash in the scene was the utilization of this technique, which still inspires musicians decades later. "When I was a kid, my mom would get, at Dollar Tree, a three pack of cassettes, like blank cassettes for a dollar. And that was the beginning of my recording music. I would just like yell into my mom's Radio Shack cassette recorder to be drums. I was just totally abusing the tape recorder, because I'm five and crazy. I put it in stone, I just screamed into a machine." said Oliva.
The band's new album, "Motel Cable," comes five years after their previous self-titled LP. Oliva spoke about the band's process, and how more new music shouldn't take as much time in the future. "We've got like 30 more songs, too, but we just don't know what to do with them. So were not going to have to spend another four years workshopping those. I want to put another album out within the next year and a half." said Oliva.
Ex Pilots' "Motel Cable" is out now via Smoking Room Records. You can find all their music at expilots.bandcamp.com.
Songs performed:
Hammer
Spirits Up
Dog in the Yard
Trophy Boy
Too Far
Thirty Days
Dianetics
