11. Skyjacker
“I Dream Too”
from “Ultimatmagnetictape”
Ian Richards–sounds
Glen Delando–keyboard, drum machine  
www.myspace.com/2skyjacker2

Ian Richards and Glen Delando, the duo behind the experimental noise band Skyjacker, don’t think of themselves as musicians.

“We’re more like artists creating sounds,” Richards says.

In their songs, stretches of silence are broken by snippets of dialogue and what sounds like someone dropping the microphone. Once the music starts, it’s tempting to force a melody on it and impose some constraints. But that’s not how Skyjacker works. Instead it’s more like a freewheeling journey through a jagged, Hieronymus Bosch-inspired sonic landscape, a place that seems vaguely familiar when it’s not dissonant and elusive.

The band’s MySpace profile lists their influences as “everything we have ever listened to and are listening to” and a note on the back of their “unofficial” album thanks “everyone everywhere.” They prefer, it seems, to create what they create and leave the rest.

Skyjacker rose from the ashes of Burn a Cross About It, a more traditional metal band that both Richards and Delando were in.

“It was largely based around the guitarist,” says Richards, “and we were just trying to keep pace with him.”

Last Halloween, Burn a Cross was invited to play at a house party, but save for Delando and Richards, the rest of the band didn’t show up. The two “just threw some stuff together,” and Skyjacker was born, giving Richards and Delando the opportunity to explore how individual sounds and notes can work together to create something unconventional. Skyjacker is more about exploring how sound works than having an overall goal for its music, Richards says.

“It’s kind of moment to moment. A lot of times, a lot of our recordings are actually one-offs,” he says.
The two like to use “simple, cheap electronic equipment we can get the most out of.” Delando usually lays down the base for each song with a drum machine or keyboard while Richards writes the lyrics and uses a multi-effects processor called a Chaos Pad to get the various sounds used in their music.

The duo has played the Seacoast and as far away as Manhattan, and Richards says an official album is due this winter, with a possible tour in 2006.