Pilot Abilene emerges as something wholly new and strangely familiar. Formed at the crossroads of friendship, artistic restlessness, and sonic experimentation, the band brings together members from vastly different musical backgrounds — yet their convergence feels natural, even inevitable. In this interview, two members — Zody and Lauri — discuss postwestern dream logic, the origin of the band’s name, and the unseen labor behind making music.
Pilot Abilene brings together people from some wildly different musical universes — how did this lineup come together, and what clicked?
Lauri: Friendship, necessity, calling, and to make some good use of time.
Zody: I met Lauri at a karaoke bar a couple years ago (RIP retroteek) and I think pretty immediately we started talking about making music. I was getting my masters from EKA at the time so my priorities were divided for a while, but here we are now.Forming a new band feels like an opportunity to create a new identity. How do you navigate the balance between your individual pasts and this new shared identity in Pilot Abilene? Do you ever feel haunted by your previous bands — either creatively or in how people expect you to sound?
Zody: I‘ve certainly felt haunted by peoples’ expectations in relation to previous music projects when I lived in the USA, but now that I’m here, no one knows what to expect and that feels good.
Lauri: I would expect people to expect something different from a new, different outfit. The freedom of no comparison is what enables to commit, for me at least, without confusion and clash of material. To be more focused, present in the new music. And it’s definitely a good deal to have a various mix.
What’s something surprising you’ve learned from each other as collaborators coming from such different sonic corners? What part of your previous selves — from Holy Motors, Psychoterror, Sapphogeist, Meelik — did you bury?Zody: When you’re coming from an electronic music background, it can’t be overstated how different the entire process of making music is when you go analog, from songwriting to recording. Your relationship with time changes when you can’t sequence your instruments. I guess this is a pretty basic observation but it’s definitely been an adjustment for me.
Lauri: Not as collaborators, but for the record: Sven is a hard working drummer, Gert works too hard, Meelik is the light of the room and Zody even more talented than I knew. The name Pilot Abilene has a cinematic ring to it — what’s the story behind it for you?Zody: It’s a reference to a film called “Southland Tales” — arguably an objectively bad movie, but somehow also one of the most incredible pieces of art to ever come out of Hollywood. It’s kind of like a hyperreal fever dream of post-Internet society that somehow manages to make all contemporary movies feel obsolete, inadequate, and guilty of fleeing the present moment on some consolatory nostalgia tip. Pilot Abilene is a character in the film. He’s an Iraq war veteran who has been disfigured by friendly fire, like so many American soldiers in the Gulf War were. He’s addicted to a MK-Ultra style drug called “fluid karma”. He’s also played by Justin Timberlake. I could go on about this movie for hours but I won’t, I’ll just repeat his most iconic line, a reversal of T.S. Eliot… “this is how the world ends, not with a whimper, but with a bang.”
Being in a band, how much of it is labor, and how much is the pure joy of making music?
Lauri: So if making music is labour, I think it’s still one of the good ones out there, despite the lack of basic employment benefits. You either make enough money, or have a piece of that joy, or you just don’t do it. Because for most it doesn’t have lasting appeal. Mostly because of how much of the labour goes unrecognized and subsequently unpaid. It’s a pretty expensive job to have. Something of an investment in financial terminology. But such a comparison doesn’t do music any justice… to be fit inside a market economy of greed and competition.What does your writing process feel like when it’s working — is it flowing or a grind?
Lauri: Knocking on wood, because it’s been pretty organic. In many fortunately good cases the songs just come out from I don’t know where and we just channel ‘em through to let ‘em out. It’s easy. And a little woo-hoo. But it works. Sometimes you still have to give it a second of digestion, use your brain or let it sink in, and that’s normal. It’s not all that easy all the time of course, but if it sits like a duck - it’s a duck.
Do you trust yourself when you think something sounds good?
Zody: There’s always a balance. Sometimes something might feel good to play, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s interesting or worth pursuing. I think the most valuable music is a balancing act of scratching the pop itch and pushing it into further and weirder territory.
Lauri: I agree, and it depends on the condition AND the performed musicianship AND the moon phase AND the state of wreck your life just happens to currently be in. If rules and terms apply they’re subject to change. So god knows, but really it doesn’t.
I read online that you describe your sound as postwestern, east-north European drone rock — can you unpack that for us? What does that sound like in your own Words?Lauri: But those were our own words! The specific Alamo is a bit hazy, but even though the meaning can be lost the genre specifiers remain. Just pretty excited to make those sounds real soon for the first time in public so why spoil the fun?
Zody: The way Lauri just used the word “Alamo” there is I think really funny and interesting and maybe a microcosm of the type of shit we’ve been on lately. He’s referencing the phrase “remember the Alamo” from the Texas revolution in the 1800s but in a way that completely twists its context into something unrecognizable. Who remembers the Alamo and what on earth do they think they remember about it? I think we’re really interested in the hall of mirrors effect that can happen when different cultures adapt and expand each others’ archetypes, sending them back and forth until they mutate into something entirely different. And the sonic form that these ideas take is definitely a work in progress, which doesn’t fit neatly into any one genre, or two, or three.
Postwestern — when the western fades away, what remains? Who’s still out there, walking through the dust?
Zody: I’ve been throwing this term ‘post-westernalia’ around for a couple years now – it refers to the slow heat-death of the American dream and all its cultural symbols and trappings… the realization that the American century is coming to an end. For me, it’s kind of a poignant and melancholy place of departure for most of what I do creatively – kind of like a swan song for this hugely influential empire that has touched all corners of the world and its cultures, for better or for worse, coming from a place beyond judgement, just reckoning with the mortality of the American project and gazing forward to whatever’s next.
Lauri: I don’t know but if the shoe fits, walk a mile in it.
For someone who’s never seen you live — what should they expect: hypnosis, noise, slow-burning tension?
Zody: As this is our first gig, I’m just as curious about what to expect as anyone else might be.If you could turn one of your songs into a living creature, which one would you choose — and what would it look like?
Lauri: Oh yes, I think I got this one? It’s a human. Eyes hid behind some silver-lensed cool shades speeding up a lonesome highway that’s straight as an arrow, smooth as a dolphin and dark as all hells combined with a smile while ripping on a pack of smokes with such devotion that one after the other they all leave behind a trace of perpetually flickering amber for no one, for there is no one any more on either direction of this course. The past has already receded. The future too imminent. And the radio so loud. What comes will flash before their eyes that are shining impatiently ahead through a big red crosshair painted on the car’s windshield as the purple sky in the mirror brews electric with a perfect storm of both divine beauty and natural destruction.
Their sound is shaped by conversations, analog experiments, and a fascination with cultural collapse and reinvention. It’s music made for a world in flux: part reflection, part forward motion. Catch their debut performance at KIKUMU on July 12, 2025.
Photos by Jane Treima