THE NATIONAL PARCS PLAY SUPERMARKET (268 AUGUSTA) WITH GRAND ANALOG as part of the td canada trust toronto jazz festival.
FRIDAY, JUNE 20. 10PM. $10 FROM TICKETMASTER.
WHO ARE THEY? Parc rangers Vincent Letellier, Chimwemwe Miller and Ian Cameron are nature conservationists of a different sort. Under their stewardship, the sounds and ambience of Quebec’s crown-owned land are reconfigured into urban rhythms.
WHAT’S THEIR DEAL? Letellier, Miller and Cameron had worked together previously under Letellier’s alias, Freeworm. Three years ago, they began working as The National Parcs, and released their debut album/DVD Timbervision last year. The trio record the sights and sounds of the great outdoors simultaneously in audio and video formats to create truly original multimedia statements, and the contrast between the natural origins of their source material and their precisely edited, dynamic grooves is delicious. In addition to the push-and-pull rapping between Letellier and Miller, all three members sing, literally bringing classic city-slicked pop devices and rural folk forms from three continents into the pictures Cameron creates.
USING NATURE SAMPLES IN MUSIC IS HARDLY NEW. WHAT’S DIFFERENT ABOUT THEIR METHOD? “I take nature sounds and turn them into complex sounds which are unrecognizable at the end, treating them more like electroacoustics,” says Letellier. “We had the idea to make all these nature sounds really percussive, really raw and then arranging them in song forms with straight up hooks.”
The specific acoustic properties of them thar Quebecois woods impose a local aura upon the endeavour. Letellier says, “I think that if we went to the Amazon, with the level of noise generated by animals on a regular basis, we couldn’t get sounds. I think the [farther] north you go, the more silent it is and the more possible it is to do the stuff we did.”
WHERE DOES VIDEO COME INTO IT? Cameron chimes in about the role of video as an equal creative force in this project. “We recorded the samples and the video simultaneously,” says Cameron, “so it changed our approach because the medium became more cumbersome. It was another reason to leave it raw — we liked the aesthetic that we created.” It’s always tempting to go overboard with any computer-assembled form of music. “Vince said that while he was editing the tracks, having the constant reminder of video in his face kept perspective in the project, it kept him from going too nuts in sound manipulation, it kept the inspiration pure.”
HOW DO THEY TAKE IT TO THE PEOPLE? While Timbervision’s songs can be enjoyed for their pure pop tunefulness and undeniably original beats, its images reinforce ideas in the music and lyrics. The National Parcs conceive of “roots music” in a figurative and a literal sense, both in terms of their production methods and the members’ experiences in Africa and North America. They note that the urban vs rural, natural vs synthesized tensions that drive their sound also exist in many varieties of global urban music.
Letellier says, “We’re not pretentious enough to think that we’re inventing a style. But we keep an eye on focusing on how can we make urban music about where we’re from; what it looks like. Making regional urban music in a way; like baile funk, kwaito from South Africa, et cetera.”
The Parcs are currently playing jazz and folk festivals around the country, though their tightly constructed show doesn’t relate to the loose, improvisational vibe that characterizes such events. However, their danceable multimedia spectacle is bound to win over those who attend such festivals in order to discover something a little bit different. Cameron laughs: “We’re orphans, we don’t fit anywhere. The jazz and folk festivals get all those artists that fall through the cracks.”