The Darkness’ Justin and Dan Hawkins have their own audio company now, suitably dubbed Hawkins Brother Audio. The duo are kicking things off with their Permission To Land overdrive pedal, names after the 2003 album of the same name that launched “I Believe In A Thing Called Love”.
Permission To Land overdrive pedal has both Justin and Dan sides, both of which are controlled by their own Volume, Gain, EQ, and Master controls. Better yet, the pedal features a Lo-Fi switch that gives a distinct filter effect to your sound like an old vintage radio.
“The idea of it was to simulate the sounds from Permission To Land,” said Justin in an interview with Total Guitar. “There are two different sides, there’s the Dan side and then my side, which was really important. It needed to have not just one but both of our sounds built in.”
Dan added: “That was the gist, to get all of the sounds from our first album out of one pedal. As well as helping people mimic our sounds, it had to be good enough to go beyond that and become its own thing too.”
On the artwork, the brothers offered: “The art by Chiara Mazzoni shares the color scheme of artwork accompanying PtL album release, with the absurd motifs of paddles and octopus drawing inspiration from the video for ‘I Believe in a Thing Called Love’.
“Within this composition lie subtle allusions to the band’s notable achievements and the triumphant ascent of their inaugural album, for instance 3 paddles for 3 Brit awards, 7 bug-like creatures for 7 albums to date, and 4 aliens representing the band going platinum 4 times in the UK.”
