Order vs. Chaos

Pilot Cloud weathers the storm and shines In Transition.

by John Vettese

CO-PILOTS: (L-R) Justin Lerner and Nick Biscardi

[ rock/pop ]

When they talk about creating their debut album, Justin Lerner and Nick Biscardi of Pilot Cloud sound coolly calculating. The opener, "Leaf," is the first song they wrote. It's followed by the steadily paced "Red Sky at Night," the second song they wrote. And so it goes across In Transition, an impressionistic post-rock tapestry the duo composed in order, start to finish, in the months following the dissolve of their old band, Hans the Double.

That might give the impression they had a plan at the start, but the process was as exploratory as the snare drum march and wandering bass notes that begin In Transition.

Chatting over a pitcher of Kenzinger at Kung Fu Necktie, Lerner and Biscardi tell me Pilot Cloud was conceived as a studio project. There was never any thought to how playing live would work. Or how many songs they wanted to write. Or, once song two was written, what song nine was going to sound like. They didn't even know for sure that there would be song nine. "We just went by ear and kept writing until it felt done," says Lerner.

What they did know is the influences they wanted to draw from — the turbulent, semi-instrumental Appleseed Cast; the compositionally epic Godspeed You Black Emperor; the icy, minimal Tortoise. They also knew how weary they were with compromising their interests in a pursuit that, frankly, had little direction.

I'll give their old band this: It was killer with distortion. Like Hum, it dressed catchy alt-emo throwbacks in bigmuff rumbles, later toying with unconventional structures and time signatures. Biscardi warmly describes Hans the Double as a fine first band, "a really good way to learn."

But it was made up of four complete strangers who met on Craigslist. And, much as musicians like to talk up their Craigslist success stories, I'll wager you'll find more scenarios akin to what Biscardi describes: "It was almost like work. 'Meet here at this time, be here for two hours, go home.'"

Lerner concurs that the comfort level wasn't there, and despite pounding the pavement locally and a shot at touring, it didn't work.

"The part that sticks out about why everything was wrong with everything was because Hans' last show, we played to my girlfriend," says Biscardi. "And that's it. The other bands waited outside."

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Though it split in frustration in April of 2008, Hans nonetheless gave Lerner and Biscardi a chance to develop their chemistry. Having discovered shared sonic interests, the two went into seclusion to write. Instrumental lines were conceived, looped, layered and recorded in the Ewing, N.J., basement of Biscardi's cousin Bill Henderson. In Transition was finished and released late last year, and following an initially positive response, Pilot Cloud began to ponder taking their studio project to the stage.

"We started looking into other bands who have done it, like Helio Sequence," says Lerner. "Some bands have pulled it off quite nicely. So we just started practicing and seeing if what we wrote could be played live. Coming to the realization that we could do it was pretty exciting."

Pilot Cloud in performance is a sort of maximal minimalist thing. Their sound is huge, their personnel sparse. It's just the two guys — Biscardi behind the drums, Lerner on guitar — augmented by loop pedals and a laptop. Lerner howls into the microphone but, as on the album, the vocals seem to float, functioning as an instrument blending with the overall arrangement.

"I like integrating the singing," he says. "Burying it in the mix and make it part of the song and not something that you sing along to."

The songs build, blend together in complementary ways, swell to a peak and break off into trailing ambient space, allowing the spectator, as Biscardi describes it, "to recover from having just listened to four minutes of loud crashing crescendo."

That's the plan, anyway.

(j_vettese@citypaper.net)

Tue., June 16, 7 p.m., $5, with Jill Jacobs & The Cobblestones, Of the Sea and Walk of Fame, North Star Bar, 2639 Poplar St., 215-787-0488, northstarbar.com.