Parts & Labor @ Solar Culture, November 5, 2008 A review by KDD

Well I got my KDD ass out of the house on Wednesday night to go to a concert. When I say “concert,” that’s not really true to what the event was. It was more like performance art or a "happening." I went to see Parts & Labor perform at Solar Culture. Solar Culture is a tiny warehouse, stacked to the rafters with art from the community. The train tracks run behind the building, and frequently trains disrupt the sound of the show. There is no bar, no kitchen.
People bring their own beer to drink if they are so inclined. The entire space is probably about fifteen feet wide and fifty feet long. And the shows are dirt cheap (7 bucks for P&L) and end early (which is good for me since I never go out late). It makes sense that Parts & Labor would play at Solar Culture because they are of that the only musical genre that inspires me to get out of the house and experience live – Art Rock.

Parts & Labor deliver the great pummeling tightly orchestrated Wall of Noise I love to experience live. I enjoy the art of pummeling, and I wanted to see Parts & Labor because I wanted to be pummeled. Since the show was on Wednesday night, one day after the election, I knew that it was either going to be a Pummel of Despair or a Pummel of Hope. I could say that I am glad that it ended up being the Pummel of Hope, except for one thing. As soon as they tore into the opening song "Fractured Skies" (one of my all time favorite Parts & Labor songs), I realized that the ideas of Hope and Despair didn’t matter anymore because I was lost in the giant blissful wave of sound. I like to experience Noise Rock because it frees my body and mind from the trap of binary thinking (hope/despair, good/evil, republican/democrat), and turns me into a field of sensation almost without body. The first thrust of the drums, scream of guitar, and piercing whine of electronics shot right through me and reminded me why it is I really like to get pummeled. To disappear. And indeed, I did disappear for forty-five minutes while Parts & Labor went through a set of songs that that built into towering levels of sound only to dismantle themselves into white noise then start the process all over again. It was divine.

The thing about Parts & Labor is that every single musician plays the fuck out of his/her instrument. What makes the music such a gorgeous cacophony of kaleidoscopic sound is that no one holds back. Certainly Joseph Wong’s pummeling of the drums notoriously provides the first tear into the song, but he just rips open the sound space so the storm of bass, guitar and electronics can burst into the room. The sound is demanding, immediate, and all consuming with Friel’s vocals pulsing with in a desperately urgent cry to be FUCKING HEARD. I heard him and I heard every single fraction of sound that those artists pulled out of their instruments.

Parts & Labor:

BJ Warshaw. He rips up on the bass. I particularly like when he held his instrument high in the air, and he violently but precisely pulled streams of sublimely heart ripping thrums out of it. His entire body seemed to be part of the bass and the bass part of his body. Like the pulsing sounds are the beat of his own heart or another avenue for his voice, and this pounding pulsing beauty was all coming from one being. He’s also a really nice guy. I talked to him after the show and told him that I only go to concerts that are also art. Like the guys from the Liars and Oneida, Warshaw was pleased that I see Parts & Labor as artists first. They are artists who use sound (noise and music) as their medium. I told him that my favorite songs are the ones that rip open into long jams of noise that build and build and build, layer upon layer of sound, and then explode orgasmically and subside into disintegrated sound. He said, “Oh, that would be every song.” Insert KDD smile.

Dan Friel. Friel is the master of electronic sound and really helps give Parts & Labor their distinct sound, moving them from just another post-punk guitar band to sound construction artists. Tweaking keyboards, tape players, and all variety of tubes, amps, buttons, and gizmos, Friel’s electronic sound weaves through the music like some kind of industrial ghost. It is the voice of machinery, media, and the electric grid that wires the sound into the 21st century. It thrums with interference, noise, church organs gone awry, the possessed voice of answering machines, and the distant call of radio broadcasts. It is these sounds that help the music transcend into a new kind of space but also keep the music firmly grounded in a self-reflexive relation to its place an electronic media driven world. Friel’s electronic orchestrations jar us into remembering that we are listening to a sound construction by breaking up the space of the songs with the intrusion of “non-music.” These disruptions force us to listen to the “parts and labor” that create the whole of the music. And that makes sense, since many of the songs, following the punk tradition, are indeed laced with politics about labor and disenfranchisement.

Sarah Lipstate. Lipstate is a new member to the band. I’m always a sucker for a girl guitarist, and Lipstate's ghostly, tinny, melodic sound laces the music with a kind of beauty that makes the bludgeoning noise of the bass and drums even more sublime. I talked for her a good while, mostly about the gay marriage issue. She was so nice that I decided to buy the new CD Receivers because she is on it. I also got Mapmaker. It’s good to support artists, and they get a lot more of the proceeds from their sales when you buy their albums from the artists themselves. And by the way, the new album is absolutely amazing. There are so many moments of greatness on it that I can’t even begin to tell you. But FUCK YEAH, it is full of awesome.

Lisa didn’t get a photo of the drummer Joseph Wong, but let me just say right here that there is no way Parts & Labor could be Parts & Labor without absolutely relentless fierce drumming. The drumming refuses to allow you escape. It grabs you buy the neck, thrusts you headfirst into the music, and doesn’t let up. And I like it that way.

This morning it was such a beautiful crisp morning that I decided to ride my bike along the Rillito and listen to my new Parts & Labor albums. What a great way to start my day. Pedaling and pummeling. The one thing that struck me this morning is how much Hüsker Dü must have influenced their sounds. Seriously, I could really hear the punk undercurrent and it sounded great, that kind of forceful “we will not relent” sound that is both fierce and heart splitting, emotionally intense yet consciously avant-garde and political, just like Bob Mould and Hüsker Dü. I also realized they share much of the sentiment and sound of Billy Bragg. Well, nothing wrong with that.

Here are a couple of my favorite songs from the show:

Fractured Skies (MP3)

Satellites (MP3)