Plus-44's Hoppus And Barker Evolve And Don't Miss DeLonge

07/24/06 6:00pm

by Arti Patel (CHARTattack)

Former Blink-182 band members Mark Hoppus and Travis Barker have broken their silence about their new group, Plus-44, and former bandmate Tom DeLonge.

"We didn't want to talk about the record until it was nearly finished," Hoppus told MTV News. "We had an idea about what it was going to be, and it changed, but now we can finally talk about it.

"But because of our silence, all these people online started to make up their own shit. They made their own songs and posted them, saying they're our songs. The stuff that's out there now isn't really Plus-44."

Plus-44 are putting the final touches on their debut album, tentatively titled Little Death, after working on it for more than a year.

"We've tried out stuff and pulled and pushed songs," Hoppus said.

"One song, 'Weatherman,' was one of the first ones we started in Travis' basement. One night, I had a dream — and I woke up in the middle of the night and I had this guitar part in my head. So I had to pick up a guitar and write it down. And that matched perfectly with this part that Travis had written on his keyboard. We built it in Travis' basement, and that was a year ago, and we just finished it."

During that time, original Plus-44 vocalist Carol Heller was replaced by guitarists Craig Fairbaugh and Shane Gallagher, producer Dan "The Automator" Nakamura was invited to work on a track and Hoppus and Barker purchased a recording studio. The result is a sound that has veered from its electronic origins.

"There's all kinds of stuff going on," said Hoppus. "Guitars mixed with keyboards, and electronic drums mixed with live drums. It's based on guitars and rhythms, and both Shane and Craig are great guitar players."

DeLonge, meanwhile, has been making some pretty bombastic statements about his new band, Angels & Airwaves. He's caused more than a few eyebrows to be raised with such statements as, "This is the best music made in decades... It is so much more powerful than Box Car [Racer] and Blink put together."

"I have to say you're definitely seeing what the real Tom was like, and that's the only comment I'll make about him or his band," Barker said.

"But everything happens for a reason. If the Blink break-up didn't happen, we wouldn't be here right now, and we wouldn't have been able to make the record we did... It's the best thing in the world."