Downpilot

Downpilot functions chiefly as the outlet for Seattle-based vocalist, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and producer Paul Hiraga. Several of the project’s recordings earned strong critical notice across the United States throughout the mid-2000s, after which European listeners embraced the work in the early 2010s via releases on Germany’s Tapete Records. On albums such as 2011’s New Great Lakes and 2015’s Radio Ghost, Downpilot’s elegant, unhurried music incorporates strands of folk, slowcore, and contemporary psychedelia, with Hiraga’s intimate yet oblique lyrics supported by tranquil yet potent sonic textures. He resurfaced in 2023 with The Forecast, a meticulously shaped collection marked by a reflective atmosphere.

Although attempts were made to present Downpilot as a complete band, the earliest releases—the 2001 EP Thrive in a Short Season and the 2003 full-length Leaving Not Arriving—found Hiraga responsible for the bulk of the instrumentation. The small circle of contributors during those years included Jeff Brown on drums and bass, Eric Eagle on drums, Anne Marie Ruljancich on violin and viola, and producer Tucker Martine, who also oversaw 2006’s Like You Believe It. While Downpilot’s albums attracted favorable reviews, the act retained a specialized status within the United States.

Issued in 2009, They Kind of Shine, again produced by Martine and mixed by Steve Fisk, became Hiraga’s first album for Tapete Records. In the years that followed, Downpilot built a devoted European audience that grew larger than its limited American profile, prompting Tapete to reissue earlier material. Hiraga elected to perform and engineer nearly everything himself on the spacious, melancholic New Great Lakes of 2011, a practice that came to characterize much of his subsequent output. The psychedelic-tinged Radio Ghost of 2015 drew partial inspiration from Hiraga’s father’s childhood experiences inside a Japanese-American internment camp during World War II. Functioning once more as an essentially solo endeavor, the more angular 2018 album This Is the Sound was engineered and mixed by Hiraga, with occasional early instrumental assistance from Brown, Mike Musburger of the Posies, and Terry de Castro of the Wedding Present.

After a five-year absence, Hiraga returned in 2023 with The Forecast. His seventh Downpilot release, the album was again self-recorded and mixed, and it presented a varied sampling of his characteristic approaches, ranging from introspective midtempo pop to experimental yet melodic rock.