How To Build An Airplane

How to Build an Airplane is five guys with electronic gear, who all make their own music, and team up to play live, abstract electronic music.

My name is Pema and I started this group because I wanted to make a scene for this kind of music to be explored in Victoria. Other than us and some other weird electronic guys, the electronic scene is mostly house-focused, and what we're doing has more to do with thinking than dancing, so I didn't feel satisfied with integrating into the current scene. How to Build an Airplane is here so we can get together and try things out, and let old ideas get rehashed and recombined. It's a very interesting project.

Right now the group consists of myself (Pema), Nathan, Mike, Ryan and Jay. I like to play lots of ambient synthy stuff on my PowerBook. Nathan Johnson aka Hrdvsion brings a lot of awesome percussion and synthwork to the group with his laptop, and Mike can churn out rad beats on his laptop for hours on end (presumably because he's some kind of human-vulcan hybrid).... Ryan joined a few months ago and tends to hop on whatever laptops or synths are nearby, hyjacking them with authoritative basslines and crunchy beats. Jake uses his massive sampler synth and our computers to enforce a robust jungle sensibility and an international sample-heavy sound.

For a long time we were playing at Grindstone Cafe every friday, but that had to stop temporarily because of City bylaws. These days we're opening for various bands, playing art shows and such, and planning a new format for our upcoming shows.

We want to do shows at places like Thursdays, Second Story and Grindstone that feature a much more visual setup (projectors, TVs and lights), and team up with other groups, maybe two or three at a time. Instead of doing a lot of postering, we want to do a word-of-mouth promotion thing, based on mailing lists and stuff.