Pilot formed in Belgium in 2012. Guitarist and vocalist Frederick started on bass — the foundation player's instinct — before moving to guitar when he realized the instrument offered him the range his songwriting needed. He doesn't work from chord vocabulary. He searches by ear, finds something that creates the right atmosphere, and builds from there.
"The thing that counts is the sound and the atmosphere," he told us. For a band whose influences include Arcade Fire, Broken Social Scene, Sonic Youth, and Pavement, that's the only approach that makes sense — these are all bands who understood that texture is as important as melody.
Their debut Sunny Forecast (2013) had the brightness its title promised. Black Swan (2016) was a different matter. The album was inspired by the public exposure of a manager who had seemed untouchable — the kind of event that forces everyone around it to reckon with who they trusted and why. That weight gives the record an edge the debut didn't need.
Pilot are proof that intuitive players can be deeply intentional artists. The guitar doesn't know what chord it's playing, but Frederick knows exactly what it's saying.