Australian comedy hip hop trio-turned duo, The Midnight Helicopters celebrates their 10th anniversary in 2025. The group has just recently released a new digital and 2 disc collection celebrating this occasion. Their upcoming 10th album "Fake Estate" has also been announced just recently, expected to be released sometime this year. Local Comedy Rock musician and occasional hip hop artist Cameron Hons reflects on the time from the band formed to get where they are today.
Formed back in late 2015, The Midnight Helicopters featured a group of three friends who wanted to make obscure hip hop music. The original line up featured Cameron Hons, Mr. Monopoly and T-Zilla. These days it features Cameron Hons & Mr. Monopoly.
The group formed due to a completely unrelated matter. It was during the making of Cameron's then-upcoming film, Cameron's Playhouse: The Movie, based on his hit TV series. The movie was expected to come out in the December holidays of that year. The 3 members of the band appeared in that film as main characters. "The first Cameron's Playhouse movie was loads of fun" reflects Cameron. "Just recently, we celebrated the 10th anniversary of that too with a brand new colour corrected 4K upgrade, which was completely done up by myself."
While working on the movie they were also planning to do some songs for the film's soundtrack album, which was set to be released along with the movie on DVD & Bluray.
"We started to work on some ideas. Our first song we ever recorded was a track called "Welcome To Cameron's Playhouse" which plays during the film's introduction. We did a couple of other tracks. One song we really liked was a track called "G-Spired". We liked that so much we also put it on our debut album, "Midnight Madness" which was released a year later in December 2016.
"Midnight Madness was a great album" said Cameron. The album cover art was a mixture of a real photograph and a cartoon version of Cameron that was drawn by T-Zilla. The first album had a load of great tracks, such as "For Funk's Sake" "Midnight Zombie Disco Party", "Creep Capture", "Bull Fight At The Space Opera" and more including the hit track from the Cameron's Playhouse Movie Soundtrack "G-Spired". The album was well received amongst Cameron's listeners which are usually used to his wild comedy rock antics. Since a lot of people liking the album was a surprise, the band didn't wait long to get to work on their follow up album, which would eventually be titled "Licensed To Funk".
Licensed To Funk was originally released on April 7 2017. It featured a darker element of sound than the debut album, but still managed to get a lot of praise. "It's a shame at the time some of our recording equipment wasn't the best quality, but I think the songs were still good." Cameron suggests. Licensed To Funk features the lead single, "Plan B", a politically charged apocalyptic number sung by Cameron. It also featured other great tracks such as "Licensed To Funk", "Basketball", "Don Paragon", "New Beat" , and a bizarre take on the "Ghostbusters" theme song. During this time the group were also working on new exclusive songs for the upcoming second Cameron's Playhouse movie, Cameron's Playhouse 2: Another Bad Day. Released in March 2018, these songs would eventually be "Creep Capture 2", "Vibrator", "Pressurin'", "Bached Ludt" and "Platonically Evil Man".
At the same time, the group was currently working on their third album which would eventually become "Dank Disco". A third album that featured such tracks as the landmark single "Eskimo Joe" , as well as "You're Under Arrest", "Don't Funk With Me", Playing The Game", "Bitches", "I Like Donkey Kong" and more. Dank Disco ended up releasing on February 12, 2018.
Somewhere during this time, T-Zilla decided to disappear from the group, "We didn't know what to do or how to continue" said Cameron. "I suggested, how about going on as a two piece band?" at first, we were against the idea....but then we started to come up with a bunch of ideas for the new album, which would eventually become "New Wave".
The new wave album & title was a play on words. The album cover is that of waves on the beach and is also meaning for a musical style. "New Wave" was one of the Midnight Helicopters biggest albums, featuring hit tracks like "Pirate Party" (that inspired the name 'Pirate Party The Band' which would eventually become a pirate-themed metal band, also featuring Cameron). ''Technology', Bitchin' In The Kitchen', 'A Wild Knifeamon Approaches', 'Betrayal' and more. The album featured raw elements of house, dance, techno, and electronic music. The Midnight Helicopters weren't back. They never left.
Some time after the release of 'New Wave', they decided to cut some more songs for the Cameron's Playhouse 3: Rodriguez's Revenge original soundtrack which was eventually released in October 2019. These songs included 'Creep Capture 5', Hoodwinked', and 'Cameron's Mind'.
The group then took a brief hiatus, but then returned quickly and started to work on some more songs yet again for their fifth album. 'The 10 Commandments' would eventually be released in July 2020. This album featured a darker and grittier sound than previous records. But it turned out to be one of their favourite albums.
The 10 Commandments featured songs like 'Jake The Fake', 'Teacher's Aid Terror', 'The GateKeeper', 'Playstation Is The Gaystation', and more. The songs were longer.. Some ending up around the 10 minute mark. But that didn't stop the comedic flow of some songs, for example on 'Playstation Is The Gaystation', arguments break out and interrupt each other mid song whether Playstation is better than Xbox or not during random intervals.
The duo also began recording exclusive songs for the 4th Cameron's Playhouse Movie - The Phuong Phiasco. These would become the anthemic theme song ''Excellent', 'The Makest Of The Fakest', 'Super Phuong', Sparky's Raparaprap' , and 'Phuong's Redemption.' Cameron's Playhouse 4 and the soundtrack was eventually released on October 6 2020.
While there was no follow up album during 2021, The Midnight Helicopters were busy hard at work recording exclusive songs for the upcoming 5th Cameron's Playhouse movie, The Exorcism Of Phuong. These songs included 'VooDoo Doctor', 'Let's Do It Again', Secret Room', Technology (Cameron's Playhouse 5 Version) and 'Not My Theme.'
The gang returned in 2022 with a new album 'You're Late', a concept album about being late. Released in September 1 2022, the album featured 13 bangers including 'You're Late', 'Late But It's Still Illswa To The Pillswa', 'Late But It Ain't Rape', 'NASA Is Late', 'Late Night Archispectrum' and more.
In the same year the group recorded exclusive songs for the 6th and final Cameron's Playhouse movie, The Vengeance Of Voodoo Doctor, which was released on October 6 2022. These songs featured are 'Sublime', 'Flames Of Fury' and 'Darian'.
Without much of a wait The Midnight Helicopters returned again in the beginning of 2023 with a new album 'COVID22'. COVID22 was a groundbreaking album featuring many hits including 'B A N N I N G', 'Archispectrum Post COVID-19', 'Garry - COVID In Human Form', 'Sonic Retro', 'What Went Wrong With Pokemon' and more.
In the same year they recorded an 8th album, 'Rock & Stone Brother', which was a concept album based on the video game Deep Rock Galactic, that is mentioned several times during the album's tracks on random intervals. Featuring singles such as 'Best Buy Depressed', 'Rock & Stone Brother', 'If You Don't Rock & Stone', Security Point', 'CameronExcellent', 'Dirty Looks' and more. Rock & Stone Brother was eventually released on November 21, 2023.
Their ninth album, DIRT was eventually released on Auguat 1 2024. Featuring 10 great tracks including 'DIRT', 'Definitely Darian', 'Tired', 'Crypto Crazy', 'Vacation In Vietnam', 'Creep Capture Rebooted' and more. DIRT once again received a positive reception from listeners.
In the mean time, you can enjoy their newly retrospective compilation album , '10th Anniversary Collection', which is available now on digital and CD. It features 2 brand new songs!
The Midnight Helicopters - 10th Anniversary Collection
If you found any of these albums or songs interesting and want to check them out, feel free to follow or listen to The Midnight Helicopters on their Bandcamp page to keep in touch with their latest releases. If you want to find the Cameron's Playhouse Movie Soundtracks, check them out on Cameron's bandcamp page.
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