Aeroplane Interview

Take a hat, a pair of glasses, and a stunning nu-disco sound and put them together and you’ve got Aeroplane, the one-man operation of Vito de Luca. Having been in the air for three years now, Vito has taken the world by storm  with an array of sexy originals, party-starting remixes, and celebrated monthly hour-long soundcloud mixes. With his sights once again set on the United States, Aeroplane has announced that he’ll be touring North America this February, hitting several cities from New York all the way to Los Angeles. These are must-attend shows people, so check down at the end of the interview for the tour poster and dates!

Luckily, we got the opportunity to have a few words with Vito before he embarked on his tour. Hear what he has to say about Detroit techno, his new custom studio, nostalgia for the 80s, and much more down below! Enjoy!

Upside Sounds: Let’s start by settling a bet: half of the Upside Sounds team is from Belgium, and the other half from the US. Which crowds are better to play for? What’s your favorite venue in Belgium?

Aeroplane: My favourite venue used to be Libertine/Supersport wich unfortunately closed last month. I have to say that Belgium crowds are better, to support my fellow Belgian, but the US are pretty amazing too.

US: I know a lot of artist don’t like to attach genres to what they do, but despite that (or maybe because of it) it usually makes them the best people to ask: how would you describe your own sound, non-generically?

Aeroplane: Disco Not-Disco drums. With cinematic and pop melodies mixed with wathever other things cross my mind.

US: I know you used to own a record store – how did being around that assortment of music play a role in developing your current sound?

Aeroplane: I’ve always had ecclectic tastes. I loved 90% of the records I was selling, and being able to listen to all these new records weeks before the customers was a delight. I don’t think it developped my music tastes, it was an extension of it.

US: Congrats on the success of In Flight Entertainment, we over at Upside all really loved the concept and the execution. How’d you manage to get all those exclusives? Do you think it’s something you’re going to want to do again?

Aeroplane: Well I was surprised that I managed to pull that one off. It was a great project, with great people. Mainly friends of mine. I really hope I can do it again ! But there are other priorities at the moment.

US: I read recently that you’re getting into a bit of Detroit techno – who is your favorite artist? What influence is the genre going to have on your next album, if any?

Aeroplane: I’ve always loved techno and house. Chicago and Detroit. You can’t make anything linked to electronic music without being influenced by them. Or Kraftwerk. I love Cajmere/Green Velvet beats and effortless groove. I love Carl Craig build ups. I love the lush pads of Detroit Techno. All of that is going to be more and more in my music.

US: Your music generally hovers in the low hundreds in terms of BPM, if I’m not mistaken ~120 BPM is the highest you’ve gone. You’ve said before that (paraphrasing ) you feel like the instruments have more space to breathe at lower BPMs – do you feel that the opposite is true of most dance music right now (i.e that its stifled, etc).

Aeroplane: There is music at every speed and BPM. Just pick the one you prefer. I love 105 to 115bpm. That’s my favourite, but that’s just me, it’s not a campaign to slow music down. But the way I play instruments and write music works better at that speed. It’s like a singer vocal range, he has to pick the range where his voice sounds the best.

US: I know you’ve built your own recording studio to record the next album – what was that experience like? What did you want to make sure was justtt right?.

Aeroplane: It is being finished as we speak, I hope to hear what it sounds like tonight. As a musician I like to play things live, but with computers you get a lot of latency, wich I’ve always felt takes away the groove you put in your music, so I pretty much build a studio that looks like a Pro Tools session, except that it’s not in a computer, it’s all there. With a real API mixer, and EQ’s all my favourite compressors and pieces of gear. If you had to that all the synths I’ve ever dreamed off, I have really high expectations for my next record !! One example, I liked when I mixed in the box to use Pultec EQ’s on the master but the real Pultec were mono. Well I bought two, so I can use that legendary EQ on my master bus.

US: Where do you think your love of the 80s comes from – was it just important to you growing up or did you rediscover it once you got older? What do you make of the widespread revival of 80s sounds today – are there any acts that you think are doing it particularly well?

Aeroplane: I grew up in the 80′s. My first musical memories are from 1986-1987. Then I indeed re-discovered it older. And my love for synthetizers is feeding my 80′s obession. I don’t really follow a lot of new acts. I like songs more than new bands, I’m not a big ” music scene ” follower so I couldn’t tell you who will revolutionize the 80′s. But I hope nobody does as I like the 80′s the way they are.

US: I don’t know if you have read Simon Reynolds’ latest book Retromania, but in the preface he says this: “The very people who you would once have expected to produce (as artists) or champion (as consumers) the non-traditional and the groundbreaking – that’s the group who are most addicted to the past. In demographic terms, it’s the exact same cutting edge class, but instead of being pioneers and innovators, they’ve switched roles to become curators and archivists. The avant-garde is now an arriere-garde.” Do you think he’s right? And do you think that this is, as he does, a fairly bad thing?

Aeroplane: I see his point. I do have a past addiction. The music I listen to at home is 90% from before 1994, that’s just what I like. But we also need the “curator/archivist” side, because the 80′s also came up with a lot of really wrong things, and you need people passionate enough to dig for days and come up with that one track nobody has ever heard and everybody forgot. And you have to know, understand, that it’s that one, not another one. You need taste, and knowledge, that not everybody has. I don’t think it is bad to be addicted to the past. I don’t think it’s good neither. It just happens to be.

US: Last question: if you had to take your philosophy towards music and encapsulate it in one sentence, what would you say?

Aeroplane: I’ll quote Lee Scratch Perry “My king is the music himself. So then if my king dead, then the music will dead. But the music is immortal, the music gain immortality. How can the music die?”

A huge thanks to Aeroplane for taking the time out of his super-full schedule to talk to us! Stay up to date and grab some more tunes over at his facebook and soundcloud and get to know him even better by following his twitter!