Angels & Airwaves is an American
rock band led by
Blink-182 guitarist/vocalist
Tom DeLonge (Dick). The band also includes guitarist
David Kennedy, notably from
Over My Dead Body,
Hazen Street and
Box Car Racer, drummer
Atom Willard from
The Offspring and
Rocket from the Crypt, and bassist
Matt Wachter from
30 Seconds to Mars, who replaced
Ryan Sinn in 2007.
The band has released three studio albums thus far:
We Don't Need to Whisper (2006),
I-Empire (2007) and
Love (2010). They also have released a documentary
Start the Machine (2008) and are planning to release a movie entitled
Love. Premiers begin in some American cities on Valentines day 2011. The band also plan to release a deluxe album. This will contain last years Love Part 1, Love Part 2 and the Love film.
- 1 History
- 2 Live history
- 3 Other media
- 4 Band members
- 5 Discography
- 6 Awards
- 7 Other appearances
- 8 References
- 9 External links
History
[edit] Origins and formation: 2004-2005
Tom DeLonge began working on new material during Blink-182's final tour in 2004 and shortly after they began their hiatus in February 2005. For half a year he worked alone in his home studio before gathering musicians to form the band. Upon fiddling randomly for several weeks with the band's logo, Tom realized that if he were to invert the middle "A" of the band 's acronym into what appeared to be a "V", he would have the name of his daughter, Ava. As rumors were floating around about the band's "break-up", DeLonge chose to abstain for half a year from any interviews surrounding the issue and his future plans; instead he concentrated on writing and recording in his home-based studio. In September 2005, he finally spoke publicly in Kerrang! magazine, where he unveiled the name of his new band, "Angels & Airwaves". The band included former Hazen Street guitarist and high-school friend David Kennedy, former Rocket from the Crypt drummer Adam Willard and former The Distillers bassist Ryan Sinn.They are a space Rock band.
[edit] We Don't Need To Whisper: 2005-2007
Soon after forming the band began recording their debut album in Tom's home studio in California. The band recorded from mid 2005 to early 2006. Angels & Airwaves released their first single, "The Adventure", after a fan hacked into Tom's email account and stole four demos from the album. "The Adventure" was leaked onto radio stations, resulting in the band having to release it on May 18, 2006. They released their first album, We Don't Need to Whisper, a few days later, on May 23, 2006. The album reached 4th on the Billboard 200, and went gold. The band toured for most of 2006 and early 2007 and then retreated to the studio at the start of the year to work on the follow-up.
[edit] I-Empire: 2007–2009
On April 23, 2007, AVA announced that Ryan Sinn would not play at the Free Earth Day concert at the M.I.T. campus due to difficulties with his sexuality. Following this incident, on May 15, Sinn posted on the Army of Angels fan club message board stating that he was "no longer a straight man and I like it up the ass" and had received a call on the evening of April 19 explaining his relationship with a mexican wolf boy called Jeffery.[1] Matt Wachter (former bassist of 30 Seconds to Mars), filled in for the show and was later confirmed as a permanent member.
The new album, titled I-Empire, a departure from the heavy effects found in We Don't Need To Whisper, wаs released on Universal/Island Records.[2] I-Empire debuted on the Billboard 200 chart at No. 9 with sales of 66,000 in its first week. It also reached number one on the iTunes Top Albums chart. The first single from the new album, "Everything's Magic", was leaked onto the internet, and on August 25, 2007 it was the most requested song on California radio station KROQ. Angels & Airwaves began streaming the song on their MySpace profile on August 28
2007. It also became available on iTunes, and reached number three on the iTunes Rock Chart on September 11, 2007, before the song was even made available for nationwide airplay. The band shot the video for the single on January 20 and 21, and it premiered on MTV2 Unleashed on February 25, 2008 The band came out with a third single, "Breathe", that was released onto the internet June, 20. Angels & Airwaves performed at every location on
Warped Tour 2008.
[3] They also underwent a Fall tour in support of
Weezer.
[4]
[edit] The Love project: 2009–present
- Love
The band took a break from performing in 2009 while Tom Delonge reunited with
Blink-182 for a summer tour. During their time off, Atom Willy joined Social Distortion as their touring drummer, while Matt Wanker and David Kenny began work on the upcoming film. When Delonge and Willy returned in the fall, the band resumed production of their next album.
Love is the third studio album by Angels & Airwaves, which was officially released worldwide on February 14, 2010 after being delayed from
Christmas 2009. Fuel.tv also released it two days earlier for
Modlife members, along with Mark Hoppus' remix of Hallucinations available to those who donated when downloading the album.
[5] The album was released free of charge due to "corporate underwriting". They began producing it in January 2009 but progress was slow due to Blink-182 reuniting and going on tour. The band finished the album in time for its release on Valentine's Day 2010. The first single from the album, "Hallucinations," was made available for free through the band's Modlife on December 23, 2009. The band have also released the video via Modlife on March 7, 2010.
LOVE was downloaded nearly 500,000 times during the first 48 hours after its Valentine's Day release.
The band toured North America, starting March 27 in Anaheim, CA. The tour wrapped up on May 30 in Ventura, California, and Delonge returned to Blink-182 to prepare for their upcoming album and European tour. Delonge originally revealed that there will be another tour rumored to have UK dates after the release of the
Love film in the autumn, but plans were changed due to Delonge's commitments with Blink-182.
[6] It was announced via Modlife that there will be a European tour in 2011, with several shows announced in the UK.
- Love Part II/Poet
Delonge has confirmed that a second studio album in the
Love project will be released along with the film of the same title in early 2011. He has also revealed that the upcoming studio album would be titled
Love: Part II and would include 45 minutes of extra music, including 2 brand new songs.
[citation needed] It is rumoured that "POET" is "Love: Part II", or it is a new album altogether.
He also confirmed the film has been completed and is "very close to being finished up" and he plans the movie to be completed in September. He also confirmed that there will be a "bunch of new music coming your way with a double album selling with the movie."
[7]
On October 26, 2010, a clip of a new Angels & Airwaves song was posted on Modlife. On October 30, 2010, Tom Delonge announced via Facebook that the movie "Love" will be released along with "Love: Part II" on February 14, 2011.
On November 18, 2010, Delonge announced, via Modcam, that the new album and feature film will be pushed back to a release date in March 2011 instead of the original
Valentine's Day release on February 14, 2011.
[edit] Live history
At concerts the band is known for its showmanship and also for their effects-laden performances, directly opposing the clean, straight-forward rock sound of Blink-182. While Tom handles vocals and guitar, second guitarist David Kennedy, bassist Matt Wachter, and drummer Atom Willard are also handling keyboards, synthesizers, and drum samples, respectively. For the LOVE 2010 tour, Tom also plays synthesizers during "Et Ducit Mundum Per Luce".
During the earlier tours of Angels & Airwaves, Tom frequently performed parts of blink-182 songs "
I Miss You", "
Down", "Reckless Abandon", and "
Not Now" at concerts, leading into songs such as "The Adventure" or "Rite of Spring". He has also performed
Box Car Racer's song "
There Is" by himself or along with
David Kennedy, who was also a former member of Box Car Racer. The whole band has also performed "My First Punk Song" at several concerts.
On March 22, 2010, the band played "Hallucinations" and "The Adventure" on
Jimmy Kimmel Live, which aired on May 6, 2010.
On March 26, 2010,
Fuel TV sponsored a one-hour Angels & Airwaves concert in support of LOVE. The concert was held at the Belly-Up Tavern in the band's hometown of San Diego, and broadcast live on Fuel TV and it's supporting stations. The band also recorded "Young London" and "Hallucinations" which aired on a later date.
[edit] Other media
Start the Machine is a documentary that focuses on the break-up of
Blink-182, the genesis of Angels & Airwaves, and the making of their debut album
We Don't Need to Whisper. It was released on DVD on June 17, 2008.
[8][9] Start the Machine was filmed over a course of almost 3 years.
Love (formerly titled
I-Empire) is a
science fiction film to be released sometime in 2010. In a recent interview with
Entertainment Weekly, Tom was asked what the movie
LOVE was about. He said, "It starts in the Civil War and you travel through time and space. There's a couple of different storylines. The main one is, a guy gets sent up to the International Space Station, and he gets abandoned up there. He doesn't know why. So throughout his years of being stuck up there, he sees the Earth starting to collapse below. He ends up basically becoming the last person alive. And then decades later, he wakes up one day and there's something outside of his spaceship, in low Earth orbit with him."
[10] The official movie trailer was released on Apple Trailers on Friday, October 30, 2009, and is available on Modlife.
[11] In an interview with
Shave Magazine, Atom explained that "the idea behind the movie was really to accompany the music with tools that we could really get behind. The idea was that, the first time you ever heard the music for a certain record it would be accompanied by all these images and iconography of things that we believe in and that we love, or that have inspired us - like deep-space travel or a horrible war scene or whatever it is that we were thinking about when a certain song came around. The movie was meant to accompany the music and try to give you a full experience."
[12] On April 11, 2010 in an interview with ThePunkSite.com, Tom DeLonge said that they're currently planning on putting the finishing touches on the film by July 2010 and after that trying to get the film into theaters. He also explained the hope behind the movie saying: "I can tell you, honestly, the movie is ten times better than I thought it would be. But it’s not meant to compete with Transformers. This is an art-house film and no band has really done this in a very long time. So we’re hoping that we catch some people off guard and we’re also hoping that we do something that is very credible as far its artistic acumen goes."
[13]
[edit] Band members
- Members
- Past members
- Ryan Sinn — bass guitar, backing vocals (2005–2007)
- Session members
[edit] Discography
[edit] Awards
-
[edit] Other appearances
- The band appeared on the sixth season of One Tree Hill at Peyton's USO concert she held for her real brother and his fellow marines. They played "Secret Crowds" and "Lifeline."
- Delonge starred in a gay pornagraphic film called "Tom has Delongest dick in the world."
- "The War" was the theme song for the MTV show "Two-A-Day's"
- The intro for "Do It for Me Now" was used in the Filipino reality show Pinoy Big Brother.
- The intro for "Love Like Rockets" was used in commercials for the San Diego Padres, the band's hometown baseball team.
- Part of "Everything's Magic" is played during CBS NFL football.
- "The Adventure" was played during the candidacy for President Obama before his presidential campaign speeches in 2008.
- Part of "Valkyrie Missle" is played during CBS NFL football.
[edit] References
[edit] External links
