Parquet

Carton Records

The ground slips beneath your feet, then becomes as hard as concrete. The walls melt, move closer together and then disappear. The stage becomes liquid, the musicians' arms no longer distinguishable from their instruments. Our bodies are taken back to a primal state. This experience has nothing to do with synthetic drugs or a sensation of imminent death. The group Parquet takes to the stage. A pile of minimal motifs, rhythmic patterns, bursts of guitars and synthesizers. In this in-between world, you lose your footing and give in. The dizziness is short-lived, because deep down, it's there, showing us the light. The drums are at the centre of this ephemeral architecture, adding and subtracting elements to and from the band's long, hypnotic pieces. Parquet is a world of paradoxes, a labyrinth that we travel through at top speed, a permanent climax. Founded in 2014 by drummer Sébastien Brun, the band embraces the fantasy of techno music played with instruments wholeheartedly. Iconoclastic in essence, the group stands out for its ability to bewitch."The material is raw, demanding, rough, electric, framed in an electronic and danceable aesthetic, but which could be quite different. I see the arrival of the different elements of the music as the arrival of the characters in the opera. With preparation, suspense and emphasis. The ambition is to keep the listener on their toes while at the same time letting themselves go. "says Sébastien Brun, confirming that Parquet's music is more a question of sensation than dogmatism, while claiming a certain narrative form, far removed from any abstract and vain over-conceptualisation.It would be a shame to reduce the group's music to its power on stage. On its debut album, Parquet opens up the field of possibilities and brings together abrasive techno, experimental rock and electronic brutalism in a unique body of work. Recorded during 2019 and worked on remotely by the various members of the group (at the time of recording it was Julien Desprez & Clément Edouard ) (Simon Henocq, Nicolas Cueille, Jean-François Riffaud, Guillaume Magne and Sébastien Brun), this first long format was mixed by Bertrand Fresel and then by James Ginzburg (half of Emptyset). Ginzburg's motto: "feel free to be extreme". It finds the group at a new creative stage in its life: between deconstruction and re-appropriation of a music that reinvents the primordial force of sound, that finds new paths to the bodies of dancers, that totally rethinks its supposed dependence on the melodic and commercial formats of the time.