BeatRoute Magazine Alberta print e-edition - Feb. 2016

PARQUET COURTS
Brooklyn punks break vow of silence, find a higher power
photo: Matt Lief Anderson
Parquet Courts have made quite the name for
themselves, brandishing a four-album discography
of lyric driven art-rock. Reminiscent of
other such New York bands as Modern Lovers, the
Velvet Underground or the Talking Heads, they’ve
adapted a sound so ingrained with the city it’s almost
hard to believe they’re Texas implants. The beginning
of their latest EP, Monastic Living, released this
past November, starts off on the same path as most
Parquet Courts albums do. Singer Andrew Savage
ends the EP’s first track “No, No, No!” shouting over
a steady drumbeat. “I’m just a man // I don’t want to
be an influence // I don’t want you to understand //
I don’t want to curate, publish no memoir // ‘No, no,
no!’ // We’re just a band.” From that point forward,
it’s all silence.
“You know I anticipated that with this record
people would say, ‘Oh they’re too lazy to even write
words.’ But really, that’s not what it is. We were doing
a vow of silence for a while, and we weren’t doing any
interviews, you’re actually the first I’ve done after this
vow of silence. So people have this impression that
we’re slacking. But really we decided we’re going to
take this monastic vow and we’re not going to talk.
Much like someone who is a monk or a nun, or whatever
faith the monastic positions apply to, my heart
and mind is devoted to Parquet Courts in a way a
monk’s heart and mind might be devoted to a higher
power,” Savage says. The silence Parquet Courts blanketed
us with hasn’t been completely void of sound,
just words. The first track on Monastic Living is the
only one with lyrics, from there it falls down the
rabbit hole of experimentalism. Each song is noisier
and less organized than the last. The entire record is
ROCKPILE
by Maya-Roisin Slater
improvised. When asked what contributed to this
shift Savage says plain and simply, “We became very
religious and wanted to make religious music.”
For the foreseeable future it seems they will be
taking their newfound spirituality to the people.
They have broken their vow of silence, chatting over
the phone on a Monday with a modest monthly
music magazine from Western Canada. They’re
embarking on a tour where they will be participating
in clean living and hard playing. “When we go to
Canada there’ll be no Molson for us. It’ll be longer
sets. We might be doing a Bruce Springsteen kind
of thing. You know, hardest working man in rock
and roll, playing for about six, seven, eight hours
sometimes. That’s my prediction. I would say even
less words, maybe chanting. I would encourage all
faith-based people of Alberta and British Columbia
to come check it out. I know there’s a large Sikh
community in Western Canada. I encourage them to
come.” Savage also welcomes Christians, Buddhists,
the non-converted, and people who have already
surrendered to the almighty power of music.
If you’re still confused after reading this and are
searching desperately for a way to get on to Parquet
Courts’ level, Savage says to look inside yourself and
not to external sources. That’s how they found a
higher power. However if you look inside and don’t
find anything particularly mind blowing, I wouldn't
sweat it too much. After all, Parquet Courts don’t
want to be an influence, they don’t want you to
understand.
Parquet Courts play in Calgary at The Commonwealth
Bar & Stage on February 19th.
CONTAINER
techno outsider eschews the club aesthetic
trying to make my version of dance
music, and I don’t even ever dance
“I’m
really.”
This admittance comes from Ren Schofield,
a techno producer who doesn’t appear at first
glance to really care all that much about techno.
The Rhode Island native lives in a small house in
south side Providence where, for the better part
of the last five years, he spends most days making
music as Container. Techno is a relatively new venture
for Schofield, who used to make experimental
noise music in various groups and on his own.
Over three albums as Container, Schofield seems
eager not to make his music easily definable. It sits
in a murky grey area somewhere between noise
and techno. The only constant he maintains is
that the songs are focused around a beat.
“Everything with the project is going to be
techno, at least in some sense. That’s something
that I always have in mind. I’m not really thinking
about how it would work in a club necessarily,
but if the rhythm is right, I feel like it could work
in that sense,” says Schofield on the phone from
his home.
Despite his reluctance to classify his music,
Schofield is still finding himself being accepted
by both the noise and techno communities. His
reluctance has resulted in the opportunity to play
a wide variety of shows: everything from techno
raves in massive nightclubs like Berlin’s Berghain
to small house shows with rock-oriented lineups.
“Recently I’ve been playing just like rock shows,
which has been kind of cool. It’s just a bunch
of bands and then I’m on in the middle and it’s
totally weird, but it makes more sense to me than
playing at some fancy techno club. I kind of enjoy
it more than doing that, but it is nice to have the
opportunity to both those things and play some
noise show too.”
Beyond playing live, his music has seen release
on behemoth labels in the electronic community
like Mute and Liberation Technologies. It’s not
From Berghain to basements, Container brings bristling rhythm.
by Jamie McNamara
hard to see why Schofield’s music connects with
fans of non-traditional techno. His latest LP, aptly
titled LP, is Schofield’s most immediate work
as Container. It is an intensely brief 27-minute,
seven-track adventure into the some of the
most punishing songs Schofield has created yet.
It is intensely percussive and loop heavy, every
sound has been smashed down by compression,
rendering even the smallest sounds as powerful
as gunshots.
Noise and techno are not as unrelated
as one might think, there’s always been the
noisier contingent of techno producers.
Clark, Primitive World, and Andy Stott are
just a few examples of producers who utilize
noise and general chaos in their tracks. Still,
none of the mentioned do it to the degree
of Container. Songs like LP leadoff “Eject”
are decidedly non-melodic, but still more
accessible than they have any right being.
Like most of the album, the song seems to be
put together on-the-fly, their rough nature
making it seem as if the song were made only
once, never to be replayed. Schofield himself
admits that his writing style lends itself to an
improvisational tone.
“I usually am playing music every day, and a lot
of time nothing will really happen and I’ll spend
hours just kind of messing around. Eventually
something will click and it’ll be one part that will
give me a bunch of ideas to build off of and it will
just grow that way.”
Schofield is getting set to release an upcoming
EP on London-based Diagonal Records. The EP
experiments with found sounds and methods
that Schofield wasn’t using while making LP.
Much like Schofield himself, the results will probably
be far from ordinary.
You can catch Container on February 26th at
Good Luck Bar in Calgary with support from
Corinthian and Private Investigators.
photo: Valerie Martino
BEATROUTE • FEBRUARY 2016 | 23