By Kyle Francis
There was once was a Jet Set Satellite. They were a little Winnipeg band spawning a couple of hit singles like “The Best Way to Die” and “Cool Your Jets” way back in 2001 then, they promptly disappeared off the face of the planet. Now, in the grim future of 2004, Jet Set is back with a vengeance, touring Western Canada to show off sparkling new material from their upcoming album Vegas, scheduled for release in early 2005. The band’s lead singer, Trevor Tuminski despite his busy schedule, comments on the band’s hiatus, as well as the dark new direction they’re taking with their music.
“It’s been a few years since the first album. A couple of years of that was touring. A few years after that we were writing for the follow up album, and then we sort of had a bit of a falling out with our old label.”
Tuminski explains why the band was MIA for such a long time.
“A lot of the material on our first album wasn’t flying, so the music just logically honed itself into something heavier and more visceral, and [our label] wasn’t happy with this. They wanted more of a pop act. It just came down to whether they were going to fire us of whether we were going to leave, and we struck first.”
In the music industry, tearing away from the security a record deal offers is a bold move indeed. However Trevor expresses the greatest of confidence in the ability of his band to carry through, implying Jet Set is all about the music, not the money.
“For any band, signing a record deal is the pinnacle of success, so the whole process of deciding to leave was just a measure of how much we believed in ourselves, and how much we believed in the music.”
Under a new label and walking a musically darker path, many fans of JSS’ first album may be worried the band they knew and loved has disappeared. Tuminski assures this is not the case, promising the new album will be a supple mixture of the old and new styles, but with a much larger helping of the hard-rock ingredient that made their singles so popular.
“Somebody who enjoyed the radio singles off the last CD probably won’t notice a huge difference, [but] I think people who saw us on the first tour are going to be in for a bit of a surprise,” says Tuminski, indicating the band’s move away from slower songs and into the realm of moody, dark rock. “There just doesn’t seem to be any mid-level darker rock bands in Canada right now. I guess we were hoping to fill a void a bit.”
It’s been over four years since you could hop in a car, turn on the radio and hear the thumping beats and mad guitar-riffs of Jet Set Satellite blasting out of the stereo. It’s no wonder many may have forgotten what they sounded like. With the daring new album hot on the heels of the Western Canadian tour, Jet Set is definitely poised to make a permanent impression this time around.