The Aviators

The Aviators

The last few years have seen a major resurgence in interest in funk and soul music in New Zealand, with bands playing in these styles emerging across the country.

Spearheading the Wellington division of this funk revival is 'The Aviators', an eight piece big band who have been consistently delivering that raw uncut funk to the capital and the wider country for over a year now.

“We're a fun, high energy big band. We don't take ourselves too seriously, the focus is on providing a fun time for the audience and enjoying ourselves” - Simon Love

"A mixture of trained and self taught musicians, “The Aviators” draw on a huge array of different musical influences and utilize 2 guitars, trombone, sax, bass, percussion, drums and vocals to great effect delivering a loud and rocky take on the raw funk sound created by classic artists such 'James Brown', 'Sly and The Family Stone' and 'Average White Band'.

“We work from a vague structured order and allow improvisation to emerge within it, plenty of solos going on. Like Simon said the focus is on enjoying ourselves and providing a fun party time atmosphere” - Paddy Bleakley

In certain circles they have been described as sharing stylistic similarities with Supergroove, but more in the sense of a logical development (and possibly conclusion?) of the sound 'Supergroove' pioneered in New Zealand.

As well as maintaining residencies at Wellington's Southern Cross Bar & Cabaret for the majority of 2006, 'The Aviators' also found time to perform in Auckland, Christchurch, Queenstown and the Coromandel as well as recording the bulk of their debut album at STL Audio in Wellington with 'vintage audio equipment fanatic' sound engineer Troy Kelly. The as yet to be named album is set for release early-mid February on the bands own imprint and features the talents of Ed Zuccollo , on keyboards.

All of the artwork and design is being handled by James Winchester.

To coincide with the release of the album 'The Aviators' will be taking part in a national university orientation tour with Odessa between the 20^th of February and the 2^nd of march, ending the tour with a very special show with One Million Dollars at Rising Sun in Auckland (2^nd March)

The Aviators is Paddy Bleakley, Simon Love, Kane Sherwood, Ned Worboys, Andreas Lepper, Skip Brennan, James Mason, David McGurk and you'll be hearing more about this group real soon.

www.theaviators.co.nz

(Taken from NZM Feb/March 2007)