Q&A: A Cheers to Dance and Reverie, Live From Paris With Parcels’ Album ‘Live Vol. 2’
IN THE HAZY BLUE OF LE PALACE, PARIS — yellow streams cut through vibrating air. Silhouettes intertwine and heads nod in synchronicity, slowly transitioning into swaying celebrations of a moment. Every note sung, chord played, string plucked, and drum slashed forms the heartbeat of an unforgettable night with Berlin-based band Parcels.
For months, Parcels had been touring the world. In this journey, they began to sneak in longer, more repetitive tangents into their sets. By the end of the tour, half of the set took the form of a rave, the other half featuring the more traditional performances of their music. Every night on tour, they performed these rearranged songs. Such was a practice of music as reverie, the paradoxical alignment of its creation as an act of precision, and yet it remained an indulgence in music as complete liberty.
At a secret club gig in Paris’ legendary theater and historic night club, the band recorded a full two-hour performance of dance renditions, birthing their second live album project, Live Vol. 2.
Formed in Byron Bay, Australia in 2014, Parcels now resides in Berlin, Germany. Composed of keyboardist Louie Swain, keyboardist and guitarist Patrick Hetherington, bassist Noah Hill, drummer Anatole “Toto'' Serret, and guitarist Jules Crommelin, the band explores music as both an individual and shared experience. They are creatively driven by what can happen in collaboration, as they explore the elements that comprise it. Not merely growing as a group, the members grow as individuals with fragments of the world unique from each other.
Their musical practice is dotted intricately with the memories they’ve collected, captured stories, visions, places, and people. “You have the freedom to get lost in your own world, so it can be a beautiful contrast of togetherness and aloneness,” the band said.
Their previous releases, Live Vol. 1 and 2021 sophomore album Day/Night, are pillars of this ethos of valuing music-making as an embrace of nuance, duality, and change.
Live Vol. 2 takes the form of a celebratory homage to dance music, offering recreations of Day/Night. The project is funky, soulful, and transcendent, presenting more than a replication or supplement to Berlin’s dance music scene, rather pulling listeners in with a sincere and passionate grasp to a faceless, uninhibited space.
“We strived to maintain the spontaneity, the little moments of improvised playfulness, a few sweet mistakes,” Pat shared with mirth. “Hopefully we were able to capture something close to what it really felt like in that club on that strange evening.”
Beneath the 9th arrondissement, from the sticky, purple-lit floors and low ceilings of a room humming with a past of underground community, risks are encouraged and adrenaline seeps through every down-beat, every flash of a light. Whim is cherished, stumbles are magic, and the beauty lies in the unexpected.
Shaped by euphoric house, disco, and trance, Parcels plays with a head-banging, sweat-dripping vigor. What results is not a momentary soiree of sound but a marked packaging of dance and music in the band's poignance, emphatic chaos, and careful impulsiveness.
Read on below to discover more about Parcels’ latest project, Live Vol. 2.
LUNA: You’ve recently released your second live album, Live Vol. 2. Congratulations on that! Given the nature of its creation, and your first live album, Live Vol. 1, I imagine it to be a particularly significant moment. How does it feel to be able to share this with the world?
PARCELS: It's exciting! It feels like a snapshot of a specific moment in time for us [and] the dance music we were enjoying playing over the last couple of years touring. A very concentrated version of that, live in the club.
LUNA: As a continuation of Live Vol. 1, in what ways do you feel that you’ve grown, individually and as a collective, since then? How has this impacted the new concept?
PARCELS: I think when we talked about Live Vol. 2, we were faced with a couple of options: to stick with the format and do another live studio recording with new versions of the songs, or to break the pattern and try something new. At that moment, we were just loving reinterpreting everything into dance music and feeling a natural desire to do something live in a club, so we followed that.
LUNA: That’s amazing. Your practice seems rooted in experimentation, instinct, the acts of re-seeing, renewal, and rejigging. I came across that word recently, and it seems to fit well here.
PARCELS: It's definitely in the Parcels ethos to choose change and exploration, and it's nice to feel like Live Vol. 3 (if and when we make it there...) could be something totally different again.
LUNA: The project was recorded and filmed in Paris and inspired, largely, by Berlin. Originally from Australia and now based in Berlin, your music merges a vast, rich cultural experience. This yields a space that is new for engagers, one imbued not only with global sounds but with the way in which each and all of you interact with these places, experiences, and sounds. How much of your artistry as a whole do you find inspired by European scenes?
PARCELS: It's hard to imagine what our music would be like if we hadn't been based in Europe. This record was definitely a place where we felt like we could explore the influence of Berlin and our experiences of the music and the nightlife there. The experience of Berlin is one that is unique to its own… Beyond the music, it offers a chance for an entire world that is free and transcendent.
LUNA: What elements of the Berlin music and club scene do you feel particularly drawn to? In what ways does this infiltrate the project?
PARCELS: It's always a little weird to describe experiences like that. But yeah, we were touched by the freedom that you can feel in those clubs. The euphoria that comes with the repetition in that music. The presence of dancing and getting lost in a long set. The anonymity of it all. The escape from reality.
LUNA: I can see the way you transform these elements as you craft your own musical world. It’s very fascinating to hear about the things that touch you as engagers of music — not just music as sound, but as this complete, holistic thing. In light of that ramble, what does music mean to you? And further, what does dance music mean to you?
PARCELS: Music can mean so many things. A friend that helps try to make sense of the world, [who] listens to impulses and responds like a mirror. It can be a total escape from life and from thoughts. It can be a diary. It can be a means of connection. A way to play. A way to celebrate. A way to process the heavy stuff... Dance music mostly falls on the side of celebration, I guess. I think it's about connection. The people in the room, the music, and the people making the music have a chance to meet as equals and go together on some sort of journey. But at the same time, it's loud and it never stops, and you have the freedom to get lost in your own world, so it can be a beautiful contrast of togetherness and aloneness.
LUNA: I love that. What’s that quote? “We should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once.” Damn, thank you, then, for the dancing. What was the journey of creating this project? How have you felt your sound has shifted since the previous project?
PARCELS: We always like to mess with our stuff when we play it live. So after the last album, playing festivals and concerts, we started experimenting with dance music more and more. Trying it out on stages. Maybe a natural backlash against the album we'd made, which was very introspective and soft. At that time, we also felt a desire to disappear a little as individuals. We wanted the focus to be off us and for the crowd to have the freedom to get lost in their own experience and to feel into whatever the music was bringing them. But yeah, we're not planning the changes, just following whatever feels good to make at any given time.
LUNA: The concept of a live album is very much grounded in the interaction between audience and artist. How do you hope your audiences, old and new, interact with and take from this new project?
PARCELS: I hope they like it (laughs). I hope they can feel the tension and communal energy that was happening that night. I hope they can feel the spontaneity in some of those jams. And I hope they're up for the changes we make and will keep making. My greatest hope is that our audience embraces us changing and follows us on our musical journey! But also, no worries if you prefer the old stuff...
LUNA: Before recording Live Vol 2 you were touring internationally. Eventually, you created a particular and special set, where half of it was a rave while the other half was the more traditional performances of your music. Could you talk a bit more about this?
PARCELS: We wanted to make more dance music, but we also wanted to do the softer or the poppier stuff. So we split it in half. The previous album, Day/Night, was all about these opposites, so we furthered that into a nighttime rave section of the set and a daytime section. It was really fun to weave in and out of the two.
LUNA: Touring must be quite a wavering journey. Lots of ups and downs, I’ve gathered. How was it?
PARCELS: Touring, in general, is crazy. I don't know, it's a deep love/hate relationship at this point. Because it's so beautiful what we get to do and the love we get to share and receive. We're very, very grateful to travel the world and play for so many beautiful people. It's exhausting physically and emotionally too, and we've had some pretty rock-bottom moments on tour, moments when we've pushed ourselves too hard. But we've just pretty much taken a year off to focus on making new music and feeling more grounded. That's been amazing and now we're starting to feel refreshed and excited to hit the road again with new energy!
LUNA: You said that the project was an experiment, a risk, and that you utilized what you’d learned on tour:entering long semi-improvised dance sections, and how to communicate with each other and keep a crowd on their toes. What aspects of this performance surprised you? PARCELS: We were tense during most of this performance. Long story, but the show was canceled, and then on, and then canceled, and then on, multiple times. It was super messy and kind of illegitimate in the planning. So yeah, it was a super stressful day that somehow came through. When we finished it, I wasn't sure if it would be usable at all. But opening the files and listening back later, it felt like a special tension had been captured, which somehow played well into this type of music. In certain songs I feel the tension break and we finally relax and smile for a moment and that feels special to me.
LUNA: What are some things you learned during this recording that were special and that you’d like to keep exploring in further projects?
PARCELS: I think I learned that you never really know how something is going when you're in the middle of it. That anything can come out of a moment. And that it's never really about the playing or the precision but rather about capturing a specific moment in time. Trying to capture a moment honestly is the best we can do. And therefore trying to just enjoy and be present while making the stuff is the only way.
LUNA: There is a spontaneity to the recording, you described this as an improvised playfulness, which is a lovely way to put it. Do you often enjoy that music — or more particularly live experiences of it — offer that additional aspect of it, the nuances, and details that are unique to the moment and unreplicable?
PARCELS: Yep, love that. That's why live music can be so cool. It's so nice to explore a feeling spontaneously in the moment. To try something. And the little risk in that, the little adrenaline shock, can be powerful in a whole room. Also looking back, the mistakes or stumbles that I hear in our live recordings are always my favorite parts.
LUNA: You guys formed in Australia in 2014. When you came together, what was the process like of figuring out your sound and the journey of it leading up to today?
PARCELS: No idea! It's not really a calculated decision, I guess. Feels like we have no choice really but to just play what sounds and feels good to us at the time, and that keeps changing, which is fun.
LUNA: I know that you are inspired by ’60s and ’70s classic rock and electronic music entities: Cassius, Kraftwerk, Phoenix. I’m interested in what aspects, outside of music, inspire you.
PARCELS: I think the most inspiring thing in the last year has been to step away from music from time to time. To have experiences away from the band and songs and shows. Friendships, love, new places, food, nature, menial household tasks — anything, really. That’s been really great, but so much energy and inspiration can come from taking some time to not think about music and not try to express anything.
LUNA: How do you draw inspiration from each other? To have grown alongside each other as musicians, artists, and people, must have been incredibly illuminating and unique.
PARCELS: I think we listen to each other and try to encourage each other to be different. It's been a crazy process growing up together in this band, since being teenagers and expanding more and more into our individual differences. Prioritizing individual needs has been really beautiful and everyone has grown because of it. Now we all bring something unique to the table when we're making things and we try to encourage the differences between us.
LUNA: The year is nearing its end, which is exciting and slightly scary (laughs). What can we look forward to from Parcels in this journey ahead?
PARCELS: We're excited for this live record! And keep working on new studio stuff. And we're also going to be announcing some exciting shows all over the world. It feels like we're gathering steam or something, the calm before a storm maybe, but I'm not quite sure what that storm is yet...
