Fiction Plane

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.”

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