I spoke with Erel Pilo of P!lot about embracing a Zen approach to playing guitar, learning songs in multiple languages, and the band’s upcoming Flowers tour (full disclosure: I’m a current member of P!lot).
What do you hope people take away from being at a show on the Flowers Tour?
I hope that people enjoy the music and feel a sense of togetherness and presence. That they take away a connection to themselves and remember the beauty of flowers.
You’ve talked about being inspired by the book Zen Guitar as well as Mark Speer of Khruangbin. How do you approach the process of developing your own guitar playing style? What do you focus on as you practice?
Zen Guitar by Philip Toshio Sudo really opened up my relationship to the guitar. It gave me permission to play in my own way and to have validity in my own style. It also taught me to respect my guitar more. In the book, he instructs you to play one note and pour all your soul and essence into that one note. Then play another note, and repeat the same process. I can’t say I always play this way, but it helped me remember how important feel is.
Mark Speer inspires me because he plays with such complexity, but he makes it look so easy. I really love the music of Khruangbin, as do so many others. He not only plays the guitar as a guitar, but actually mimics other world instruments, which I find fascinating — it’s so out of the box. He also will play rhythm and lead parts back to back, and he does it flawlessly. So I’ve been studying Khruangbin to try to gain some of that fluidity in my own playing.
Do songs carry the memory of how you wrote them? For example, does it feel different performing a song like “Red Dress” that you wrote from a prompt vs. a song that emerged more organically? What about songs that flowed out quickly vs. ones you had to wrestle with?
Songs do carry the memory of how they were written, but the meaning of songs changes over a period of time. For example, a song like “Or Lack Thereof,” which I wrote when I was feeling like I wasn’t taken seriously as a woman in music, now has evolved into a reminder for myself not to be a jerk and take myself too seriously either. So the meanings really change over time, and even a song that’s written from a prompt still is filled in with some personal truth.
How do you know when a song with fairly sparse lyrics like “Soft Spot” is complete — is it mostly intuitive? How do you determine when to stop sculpting vs. when to add more to a song?
With that song, the feeling I was trying to convey felt like it was conveyed. Although, to be honest, it is hard to know when a song is complete. With “Soft Spot,” I kept tinkering with adding lyrics in the bridge and nothing ever felt appropriate, so I just left it the way it was — as an instrumental section. But it’s hard to know if that empty space needed to be filled or not. I guess at some point, you just move on.
Have you consciously cultivated a wide musical vocabulary or has that come more organically? I’m thinking of how “Helium” features the Hijaz scale, you’ve performed songs in multiple languages, etc.
I do try to explore music from other cultures, although I don’t feel that I’ve cast such a wide net there.
In terms of singing songs in other languages, I’ve always been drawn to language. I love learning languages — I’ve studied Italian, French, Hebrew, and Spanish. The romance languages are more sensual than English and everything sounds cooler in French.
I think that speaking somebody else’s language forges an immediate connection with them. Perhaps that’s why I’ve chosen to learn some songs in foreign languages — plus, I think they’re beautiful.
What can people expect from Joyride? What does that project represent?
Joyride is an EP that I’ve been working on — on and off, for a couple of years. It’s a synth-based project, which is something new from the last album, Fake Hangover. It’s something I’ve been working on on my own, trying to delve more into production.
It has to do with a ride through a love affair — so the euphoric highs and desperate lows that we go through. It’s about both the value and cost of fantasy. It’s pretty intimate, experimental, and a bit poppy.
You’ve referenced Dan Wilson’s POV on the worth of art in a capitalist society. How do you see the role or inherent value of making music in your life right now?
I know the value that other people’s music has had in my own life. How songs can penetrate my soul. I can feel understood by a stranger, or be invited into someone else’s universe.
Music has the ability to encapsulate emotion in a way that is unique to that art form. To me, music is a channel in my own life to release a lot of unprocessed material. So it’s incredibly valuable — it’s healing, and it is a channel of life source for me.
Thanks for sharing! Keep in touch with P!lot and catch an upcoming show:
4/10: LoFi Brewing — Charleston, SC
4/11: Green Frog Social House — Lake City, SC
4/12: Charleston Pour House — Charleston, SC
4/23: Soul Bar — Augusta, GA
4/24: Smith’s Olde Bar — Atlanta, GA
5/3: Swanson’s Warehouse — Greenville, SC
7/10: The Wormhole — Savannah, GA