Wishes On A Plane - Unreleased

Labels: Old Kids Records/Time As A Color Records

Formats: Vinyl/CD/Digital

Release Date: 24 Apr 2020

Tracklist:

1. Your Place Is Still...

2. Perfect

3. ...At The Heart Of My Everything

4. Just Enough Space To Fit

5. Release

In mid-December of last year, I premiered a previously unreleased song called 'Perfect' by German post-rock/emo/indie band Wishes On A Plane. I also interviewed band member Daniel Becker and you can revisit that post here. Daniel has been a friend of mine for quite a while now and I first got to know him through his current band Duct Hearts. He told me that this LP was being released in April, so I placed an order and Daniel told be to wait until I had the physical copy before I reviewed it, because it included a handmade sleeve and artwork. In fact, you can find out more about that in this video on the Time As A Color Youtube channel - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXMPLotLzWw. My copy arrived on a gorgeous tan coloured vinyl, but there's also a black version, as well as a CD and also a digital option too. All five tracks on here are previously unreleased. 

I have a confession to make; I was lucky enough to get an early listen to these songs late last year. I was on my Christmas break at the time and couldn’t have picked a better moment to listen to them. Hearing them again now takes me back to that period and I instantly recognise record opener ‘Your Place Is Still…’ with it’s clean vocals and easy-going instrumentation. It’s more post-rock and than post-hardcore and seeing as Wishes On A Plane was the band that laid the foundations for Duct Hearts, you can definitely hear where the latter evolved. 

‘Perfect’ was the song I premiered last year and I still love it. It’s a mix loud rock, with maybe an ounce of dissonance, while gentle vocals set a calming mood over the top. The instrumentation is given a lot of room to breath here and the mixing/mastering gives new life to a batch of songs that were originally recorded nearly fifteen years ago, except for the vocals, that were recorded last year.

‘…At The Heart Of My Everything’ slows the pace down with lovely soulful guitar melodies that are soon joined by equally good bass lines. It’s not an acoustic song but it is stripped down for the most part, until around the final minute or so when the percussion kicks in and the driving tempo pulls you into a dramatic end.

From here on in WOAP’s songs get longer and longer, but with the length comes greater musicianship and musical expanse. ‘Just Enough Space To Fit’ is stripped down as well but it’s also very upbeat throughout it’s near seven-and-a-half minutes. It’s quite far removed from the music that you might associated with Time As A Colour (in some ways) but given the creative minds involved in both entities, it’s not a surprise. It draws from their emo/indie influences as well as there post-hardcore ones.

The album’s closer ‘Release’ is everything that’s good about this ever blurring sub-genre. Talking about the UK, bands like Funeral For A Friend (Hours onwards), Hell Is For Heroes and Hundred Reasons come to mind when thinking about it and while I don’t have any real knowledge of the equivalent scene in Germany, Wishes On A Plane would probably have been up there with those aforementioned bands had I stumbled across them earlier. I know that the comparison may be a little bit off-centre but this is a great record and posthumous or not, WOAP deserves to be talked about in  equally high esteem. 

You can stream Unreleased and buy it digitally below:-

CD/LP copies of the album, plus special limited handmade 3" cdr's featuring 'Perfect' can be purchased from Time As A Color Records here - https://timeasacolor.com. Old Kids Records don't seem to have an online store yet, but you can reach them via the Facebook link below (this is their first release, I think!).

Old Kids Records - https://www.facebook.com/oldkidsrecords/

Time As A Color Records - https://www.facebook.com/timeasacolor/