Ficton Plane will play the Benatska Festival in Czech Repulic on July, 31st. Check http://www.benatskanoc.cz/en/info/1 for more info.

Fiction Plane will be the headliner of Sautrock on the 19th of June. Check out www.sautrock.com for more info.

Fiction Plane have licensed their third album, ‘Sparks’, to Roadrunner Records for Europe (excluding the UK), the Middle East and Africa.

‘Sparks’ follows ‘Left Side of the Brain’, which was released in May 2007 and featured the popular single ‘Two Sisters’. The band spent much of the following two years touring the album, supporting The Police on their world tour, and The Feeling, Snoop Dog, and 311 during their respective summer tours in 2008. They also played a number of successful European headline tours and festivals such as Pinkpop, Festival Des Vieilles Charrues, Rock Im Park and Rock Am Ring

‘Sparks’ was recorded in the second half of 2009, together with producer Paul Corkett (Nick Cave, Biffy Clyro, Bjork and Placebo).

The LP combines the band’s live energy and highly imaginative songwriting.

‘Sparks’, will be available in two different versions a regular version and a limited edition with three bonus tracks. Both versions are due for release on  3^rd of May 2010.

Album Track Listing:

1.  You Know You’re Good (La La La Song)  
2.  Out Of My Face  
3.  Push Me Around
4.  Talking  
5.  Revenge  
6.  Two Sparks  
7.  Tommy  
8.  Humanoid  
9.  Zero  
10.  Russian LSD  
11.  Denied 

Bonus Tracks Limited Edition

12. Angel Eyes
13. Telephone Unknown
14. Sadr City Blues (Acoustic)

Front man Joe Sumner said that the partnership with Roadrunner records was “Like dolphins ganging up on a shark it’s great to feel like our label won’t be eating prawn sandwiches unless we are too."

In support of the album the band will play the European summer festival circuit before heading out on a European headline tour in the fall.

Album release dates in other global territories will be announced soon.

Listening to the music of Fiction Plane, you might be fooled into thinking you were listening to a track by the Police… only rocked-out, jazzed-up, stripped-naked and covered in chocolate. Perhaps you’d be right: Fronted by Sting’s son, Joe Sumner, the vocal similarities between the two are striking and shows that talent clearly doesn’t skip a generation. The band incorporates ethereal acoustics with devastatingly powerful lyrics and beats to bring a new standard of music into the 21st century. After a busy year of touring, and prior to the release of their next album in Spring, Fiction Plane drummer Pete Wilhoit takes some time out to chat to Sophie Andrews about the good, the bad, and the just plane [sic] funny side to the music industry. 

When did you decide that you actually wanted to be in a band? Has music always been your passion?
* Well, as early as a kid could decide, I guess. I was in the fourth grade, so… that puts you, I don’t know, how old you are in the fourth grade, maybe… 10 or something? So at ten years old, as cliché as it sounds, I started listening to The Beatles with a friend and we started a duo group called The Explosives. We started writing our own tunes and then at recess in our elementary school it rained and everybody came into the choir room and we started playing these songs. All the girls started singing along and I think at that moment I realised the power of music. At least maybe to get me chicks or something! But that’s when it really overwhelmed me as far as wanting to be a musician. I guess you could say I started music first, and then started playing the drums second. I got really serious about it in high school and decided I wanted to be a professional musician, so yeah, I think it’s always been a part of me.

So you mentioned The Beatles. What other influences have you had on your music?
* Tons of different bands! I listen to everything from Led Zeppelin, The Beatles, classical music and Jazz. I mean, I have a Jazz Degree: I learned a lot about Jazz and played for 10 years. I still play Jazz sometimes but not so much these days. But I think I was really drawn more to the rock thing because I was able to get more involved as a drummer. So, I mean, I love The Police, I love The Doors, I love Jimi Hendrix, all sorts of bands like that. I still adore bands that have great drummers. Right now, I’m really into the The Foo Fighters. There are so many bands I love, but I guess when I play I lean more towards rock, but I also have real Jazz influences as well.

Source / read more: http://www.nouse.co.uk/2010/02/23/fiction-plane-a-band-with-big-shoes-to-fill/ Photo Credit Lana Theo.

New York, NY (January 28, 2010) – Modern Drummer’s annual readers poll is now open! We are asking all fans to cast their vote now for Fiction Plane drummer, Pete Wilhoit. Wilhoit was voted #3 in last year’s “Up & Coming Drummer” category. Let’s get him to the #1 slot in this year’s “Best Rock Drummer” category!  Go now to www.moderndrummer.com and cast your vote!  Polls close February 15^th. Winners will be announced in the July 2010 issue of Modern Drummer magazine. 

UK trio Fiction Plane has found full-sound as a trio and they’ve embraced their diverse sounds with an even more diverse history of tour pairings. The group has played with dance-rockers The Bravery and rapper Snoop Dogg and even had the opportunity of opening for global superstars The Police on their reunion tour (although that pairing may not be that surprising when you consider that Sting’s son Joe is the lead singer for Fiction Plane.) With a new Spring album and new tour plans on the horizon for this group, drummer Pete Wilhoit took some time to get PopWreckoning up to speed on all things happening on the Fiction Planet.

Bethany Smith, PopWreckoning: I hear you guys have a new album coming out in the Spring.
Pete Wilhoit, Fiction Plane: Yeah, late Spring, I think.
BS: Talk to me about this album. Is it pretty much done and going through final packaging phases or where does it stand?
PW: Yeah, it’s pretty much done, we’re just mixing it at the end of this month. Hopefully that will go smoothly. You never know. Sometimes, you get hare-brained ideas when you listen to a song over and over and start reconstructing it and reconstructing it: all this ridiculous stuff. Hopefully, it will just go smoothly and we’ll all be really excited about it. I think we’re all eager to get it out late Spring, so we do have a bit of a deadline. I think it is pretty much done: about 90 percent done. We’re all pretty excited about it and we’ll release it in late Spring and start touring it.

BS: What’s the sound on it like? Pretty different from previous releases or a natural progression? What can fans expect?
PW: It is a progression. Doing like two and half to three years of touring with The Police all over the world and Snoop and 311, they bring in all the stuff, but that has gelled the band even more as brothers in the band. The trio sound has evolved even bigger and better. We enjoy being a trio and we’ve all kind of grown into that space musically and playing-wise, as far as how you play your instrument. The album has a real ebb and flow of a live show. There are real delicate moments to it, then there are real bombastic, huge, energetic moments to it when you listen to it. I think overall, it’s going to make you move. It’s got real groovy and big sounds to it. The soundscape that we originally used, well we did it in two parts. We did a session number one in studios where we constructed a song and threw everything in the kitchen sink and scaled it back a little bit, but we used a lot of sounds on it from your normal instruments to harmonium and even a music box: all these little tiny things, just to see what we could achieve musically and to push ourselves to try and make something we hadn’t done before. The second session was more going in as a trio and playing these songs live like we would at a show. I think that’s where our strong suit is as a band: our live performance and being able to play to big rooms and small rooms and big stages and small stages as a trio. I think we captured everything that the band is about from every dynamic aspect whether it’s playing in a small room and playing a more intimate feel for people to playing a giant stadium playing as big as you can be and trying to entertain the guy in the last row type of thing. We’re all really excited about the music and being able to perform the album as as live show.

Read more / Source Popwreckoning: Click here

Pete fills me in on life as a threesome, touring with Snoop Dogg, and family ties, all while the band puts the finishing touches on their new album.
AS: Okay, well, Hello Pete and Happy New Year, for starters!
PW: Happy New Year!
AS: So I guess let’s get right into it. The band has been pretty busy. You’re working on your third full-length album and I read you wanted to make this album “uniquely Fiction Plane.” Can you define that for me? Who or what is Fiction Plane?
PW: Well, it’s changed over the years. The band has been a band I think for about ten years now, and I’ve been in the band seven years. For me, that phrase for me means that the trio, the existing trio that’s been the lineup for the past three years, I think has really come into our own because of all the touring we’ve done in the last three years and just kind of growing closer as friends and bandmates. So because of all the touring and all the live playing I think that contributed to what I feel is uniquely Fiction Plane, which is kind of capturing the live sound of our live shows on an album type thing.
AS: I see.
PW: So that’s why I feel like the band has progressed and really come into our own and I think that we captured that for the latest album.
AS: Do we have a name for this album yet?
PW: We don’t. Actually, we’ve been discussing it today. We don’t have a name. We’ve got a few kicking around, but I don’t know. You know, this album happened pretty quickly because we kind of wanted to. We finished the touring cycle and then we took a bit of a break and then we, the beginning of 2009 we said, “We’d better start doing some writing.” So we did writing sessions; three in New York and three in London. And then immediately went into the studio and started recording and did like about 14 tracks in London. And then did another writing session and did five more tunes in Bath, England. And the combination of all those, it’s probably going to be an eleven-song album, which does not have a name yet, but …
AS: Oh, it’ll just come to you!
PW: Yeah.
AS: And so can you tell us a little bit about the sound of this new album?
PW: Yeah, you know, because we did it in two separate parts, it did have… not super distinct different sounds, but I think it was kind of the full range of what Fiction Plane is. Because we’re a trio, live we are somewhat limited to three separate instruments, although we throw in a couple samples every now and then.
But the first approach we took when we went in to the studio in London was, “Let’s take the songs that we’ve written and let’s explore different soundscapes in the studio.” So the first batch of songs, we went in and we kind of threw everything and the kitchen sink, everything from, like, harmonium to a tiny little music box to djembe and all these percussion things, just to see what it would sound like. And I think that we’re all really excited with the sound fabric that we kind of weaved in the studio, and those were really exciting. And then you take a few months to listen to it and let it sink in, and then we had another writing session and we did an immediate live gig after that writing session, so it was more imperative that we come up with songs that we could play immediately. So then the second recording session was more the pared down, live sound. Just more, like, “Let’s go in and play like we would live.”

Click here to read the full interview.

Fiction Plane, featuring Sting’s eldest son Joe Sumner, have just finished recording their 3rd album which is scheduled for major international release in the new year. The band has recently toured with Snoop Dogg, 311, The Bravery and The Police. Their most recent LP, Left Side of the Brain, was hugely successful in mainland Europe, namely Holland and France (charted top 10 with their single “Two Sisters”) while they’ve racked up a string of TV appearances on “The Tonight Show,” “The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson” and “Jimmy Kimmel Live” over in the States.

Source: The Music Fix

- What will be the release date of your new album?

WE ARE HOPING FOR A LATE SPRING RELEASE

- What will be the title?

WE ARE STILL DISCUSSING THAT, BUT WILL HAVE TO DECIDE VERY SOON

- When can we expect tour dates?

WE WILL BE HITTING AS MANY FESTIVALS AS POSSIBLE AND FILLING IN THE GAPS

-  What direction are you guys going with your new album as regards sound and lyrics?

WE HAVE A MIX OF NEW AND OLD SOUNDS, AND THE LYRICS ARE EXCITING AND HEART-FELT

- What has influenced and inspired you most, in writing/making this new album?

BEING TOGETHER AS A TRIO THROUGH THE LAST 3 YEARS AND ALL THE TOURING HAS ENERGIZED US TO WANT TO TAKE THE BAND TO THE NEXT LEVEL

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