Plus 44 is an electronica-based side project from blink-182 members Mark Hoppus (bass and vocals) and Travis Barker (drums and keyboards). Plus 44 also features Carol Heller (guitar and vocals), formerly of Get The Girl. The name Plus 44 is a reference to the international dialing code for the United Kingdom, where Hoppus and Barker first discussed the new project. By September 2005 the band had recorded 16 songs and is expected to finish recording in the following months.At first the band was supposed to release their debut album in fall of 2005, but due to Travis' busy schedule with the Transplants (who broke up at the end of the Warped Tour) the release of the CD will be sometime in 2006. Lately there has been rumors that Plus 44's debut album will be called "Break the Record".


There's a song by Plus 44 about called 'No it isn't'. The song really grew on me. To listen to the song go here:

Pluss 44'S My Space (http://www.myspace.com/plus44)

More info:

Pluss 44's Official site (www.plusfortyfour.com)

I'm listening No It Isn't right now, and I quite like it. I'll see if I would buy their new album when it comes out :) I'm considering it :D

Recently Carol Hellar who was playing guitar and doing backing vocals, seems to have disapeared from the band. On the official site: http://www.plusfourtyfour.com/
There is a photo with two other guys, and no picture of Carol. To the best of my knowledge I don't know who the other two guys are unfortunately, but hey maybe someone can name them on here!

Mark has been featured on the ReneeRenee official website a fair bit as of late, including a video of him doing some right jolly vocals.

Anyway some new +44 material is expected to appear soon with the new image and such, and I'm personally looking forward to it as much as the new Evanescence stuff, I'm a big old Mark fan.

They'll be better than Angels and Airwaves. ;)
Ha.

I really like the one song I've heard from them.
Can't wait for their album. They're better than Angels and Airwaves and I did try to like them.
Mark also mentions +44 on his HiMyNameIsMark podcast. He sometimes gives updates. Last I heard they were still working on recording.

Suspitions that Carol left the band have now been confirmed! Along with the identities of the two other guys in the promotional picture. It sounds like +44 are getting into business because their album is due out in October! :D

All this and more in the following interview with MTV, posted in the +44 newsletter.

The interview is entitled: Mark Hoppus, Travis Barker Break Plus-44 Silence, Talk 'The Real Tom'.




"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 breakup 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."



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Mark Hoppus would like you to know that everything you've heard regarding Plus-44 is wrong.

From the countless impostors posting fake songs online and numerous fan sites posing as the Plus' official site to the common description of the band as "an electronic side project," misinformation abounds. And so finally, after more than a year of silence, Hoppus — along with Plus bandmate Travis Barker — decided it was time to clear the air.

"This is the first interview we've done about the band. We didn't want to talk about the record until it was nearly finished. We had an idea about what it was going to be, and it changed, but now we can finally talk about it," Hoppus said (see "When It Comes To Publicity, Plus-44's Mark Hoppus Is No Tom DeLonge"). "But because of our silence, all these people online started to make up their own sh--. 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."

"It's kind of flattering that some kids would go out there and post songs under our name," Barker added. "I mean, at least it means that people are excited to hear our stuff."

Speaking to MTV News from their studio in Hollywood — where they were putting the finishing touches on Plus' debut album, tentatively called Little Death — Hoppus and Barker were beyond excited to finally be putting all the gossip to bed, and to finally have some real Plus-44 songs out there. After all, most of the music has been more than a year in the making (see "Blink-182's Hoppus, Barker Form Electronic Side Project").

"We started Plus-44 more than a year ago, writing songs in Travis' basement and my living room, and in that time we've changed some things, we've tried 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's basement, and that was a year ago, and we just finished it."

And there have been plenty of changes: Original vocalist Carol Heller is gone, replaced by a pair of guitarists: Craig Fairbaugh and Shane Gallagher. Producer Dan "The Automator" Nakamura was called in to tinker with a track. And finally — and most importantly — the band's sound underwent a rather drastic transformation. And to that end, it's no longer entirely correct to refer to Plus as merely an "electronic" act.

"At first, we had the idea that it would have a lot of electronic influences, because by necessity we were recording on a computer. But then we bought this studio, and after we moved the band into here, the whole vibe changed," Hoppus said. "There's all kinds of stuff going on. 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."

But for all their candor, there's one topic that neither Hoppus nor Barker were particularly anxious to speak about: their former bandmate, Tom DeLonge.

While DeLonge's rather unique promotional methods for his new band, Angels & Airwaves — which included promising feature films and spouting off such head-scratching statements as "This is the best music made in decades. ... It is so much more powerful, emotional and melodic than Box Car and Blink put together" — rubbed many people the wrong way, they were just par for the course for his former musical compatriots.

"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 breakup 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."

— James Montgomery, with reporting by Yasmine Richard, MTVNews

Double post... but there's some FRESH news.

+44 have spilled a TV interview, their very first. And it is a grand total of around 30 seconds long... but it's still new stuff.
Here's the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Ynz-HKqqvY

There is also a new band picture up on the official website along with a different quote.
The guys really have to stop all these teasers!