FLIGHT BRIGADE – The Alternative Synth Rockers
1. Please introduce the band to our readers!
Hello, we’re Flight Brigade a seven-piece band from Hampshire in the UK. Like most bands we’re a ‘band family’ but at our core is an actual family. Ollie and Miriam are married. Miriam and violinist and vocalist Dorry are sisters. The trio grew up in each other’s pockets, their parents best friends. The other four members – bassist Tom Clay, guitarist Thomas Pink, keyboardist Jonny Barker and drummer Neil Blandford – are childhood friends who grew up nearby. Music runs in our blood. Miriam and Dorry’s parents were the folk duo Mask, who performed at the first Glastonbury Festival and spent the ‘70s on tour, supporting the likes of Hawkwind, Roxy Music, Paul Simon and Supertramp. Ollie’s dad often drove them to gigs in his camper van.
2. You have a new single out, called ‘Fury Road’. There is a mix of melodic vocal lines and synth sounds which make this song a great anthem for your shows. How did you compose this song?
Ollie (lead singer) is our main man when it comes to composing, the guy wakes up with melodic ideas spinning round his head, he’s always got new ideas on the go. So with composing, Ollie tends to have an idea and record a ‘mock-up’ then he sends it to the band who bring their ideas to rehearsal. Some of the songs remain very similar to how Ollie first conceived them and some get a revamp and come out of rehearsal radically different with a different drum pattern or a screaming guitar solo from Thomas Pink.
3. Are you fans of the synth driven music? I can hear this great synth everywhere in your tracks…
In short yes. Our most treasured possession is a ‘Roland Juno-60 Programmable Polyphonic Synthesizer’ it’s something Ollie has switched on most of the time in his studio. Its the source of most of the synth sound in Fury Road. We like using this analogue synth the most but do also use samples alongside it at times. We’re huge fans of the synth work in tracks like Roxy Music’s ‘More Than This’, Fleetwood Mac’s ‘I Wanna Be With You Everywhere’, Kate Bush’s ‘Running Up That Hill’ those 80’s synthesizers are inimitable! But we’re also listening to the awesome Gunship a lot at the moment, too!
4. How do you share the composing duties upon the process of writing new tracks?
Once Ollie shares his ‘mock up’ for a new song we have rehearsals and keep trying things until we’re all happy. Thomas Pink tends to come up with loads of guitar riff ideas and Dorry who’s classically trained is a wellspring of ideas with strings and vocal harmonies.
5. How did you choose the name Flight Brigade?
The band name originated from the combination of our guitarist’s (Thomas Pink) love of second world war aviation and Oliver’s love of the legendary skateboarders the ‘Bones Brigade’.
6. In 2016, you recorded a full album and afterwards you continued releasing only singles. Why did you choose this strategy for new music?
Yes, I guess that was a way of releasing new material regularly whilst we gave ourselves time, to get the album the way we wanted. We still love the concept of an album which is why we’re particularly looking forward to getting our album pressed on vinyl. But album’s inevitably take so much time and we knew it wouldn’t be wise for us to just go quiet. So we released a few tracks in between the two albums.
7. Do you have a new album or preparing a full album?
We have a new album which we are releasing this September.
8. Is there any specific concept behind the lyrics of your tracks?
Each song tends to tell its own story. For example Ollie wrote the lyrics for Fury Road after getting home from a funeral where he heard his friend’s eulogy for his dad. His friend’s dad
‘Pete’ was a huge hearted, charismatic and generous man, who loved fast cars and staying up late with a whisky talking late into the night. Pete fell in love with his wife at first sight, proposed after three days and they went on to have two kids and adopt two more. The warmth and vitality of Pete was felt by everyone gathered there at his funeral and Ollie said he was just struck by the beauty and fragility of relationships and the brevity of life.
9. In 2018, you signed with Wixen Music Publishing and your music appeared in several films. Tell us about it…..
Signing to Wixen was a highlight of 2018. They have such a great roster of musicians and bands we think of as our heroes such as Neil Young, The Black Keys and Rage Against The Machine. But they also have newer acts like Gunship and Thrice, both of which we adore. Wixen have teams who look out for sync opportunities in the US and UK and we really like them as people and find them very approachable. In terms of sync so far we’ve had Flight Brigade music used on ‘Made In Chelsea’, Channel 4’s ‘Sunday Brunch’, E4’s ‘Tattoo Fixers’ and a US drama called ‘The Boston Strangler’. Alongside this, three of our members, Ollie, Thomas and Dorry also compose for film, adverts and TV, an expanding side project that has had a commission for an ITV documentary, an advert for NBC in the US, and independent films such as the upcoming ‘Learning the Ropes’ narrated by Ray Winstone. One of our dreams as a band would be to get a big film commission, we love using all our collective skills and abilities to write to picture.
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10. How easy or hard is for an indie band to sign a publishing deal and what are the advantages and the disadvantages behind these deals?
It’s hard to say really. It took us a good few years before we got an offer of a publishing deal we really liked. With Wixen we haven’t seen any disadvantages yet as they pitch our music for projects and collect royalties on our behalf. This is something we can’t do so we are delighted to work with them in this!
11. The next steps for the band?
We are launching a Kickstarter Thursday 14 March to help us fund the mastering, pressing and cutting of our CD and Vinyl and the making of our merchandise. We also have a UK tour alongside our single release, Fury Road. This starts 21 March at Dingwalls, Camden for ‘Camden Rocks Presents’:
FLIGHT BRIGADE – MARCH / APRIL UK TOUR DATES
Thurs 21 March CAMDEN ROCKS PRESENTS, Dingwalls, London
po.st/CamdenRocksTix
Fri 29 March The Cobblestones, Bridwater £5.50
www.seetickets.com/event/flight-brigade/the-cobblestones/1298210
Sat 6 April The Craufurd Arms, Milton Keynes £5
www.thecraufurdarms.com/events/2019-04-06-flight-brigade-the-craufurd-arms
Wed 10 April The Moon, Cardiff https://www.seetickets.com/event/flight-brigade/the-moon/1305910
Fri 12 April The Railway Winchester £8
www.railwayinn.pub/show/flight-brigade-2
Wed 17 April The Horn, St Albans £7
www.ticketweb.uk/event/flight-brigade-the-horn-tickets/9009815?pl=horn
Thurs 18 April The Half Moon, Putney £10
https://tickets.halfmoon.co.uk/events/2019-04-18-flight-brigade-half-moon-putney
Information: https://www.flightbrigade.com
