Parts And Labor (Brooklyn Noise)

Hurlo is OTM in that they seem to be much more into really herky-jerky rhythms and grating-but-catchy melodies. Kind of like Deerhoof in that way, sans vocals. I suspect they listened to The Fall and Wire when Hair Police were listening to Whitehouse and Throbbing Gristle.

Better NYC bands include Coptic Light, Battles, Endless Boogie, The SB, Humecetant Interruption, etc., etc., yadda yadda yadda.

i love how lauren just totally writes off sightings... *sniff*

Really?

(gygax! I'm sending an email your way soon)

My friend Nate is like that too. He saw them do some improv thing and now he's all "eh, fuck sightings. they suck." BUT THEY DON'T!! AND HE COULD SEE THEM *ALLTHETIME*--first impressions. I've been kind of sad that I've lived here for a few months now and still haven't seen 'em. Saw em in Providence a long while back with Olneyville Sound System, and it was amazing.

ps- coptic light are goddawful. just sayin'.

Also, I guess I forgot Sightings, I do like them all right (although I'm not sure if I'll ever get around to buying anything by them). Another good NYC band (via LA): Young People.

Didn't know your true feelings on Coptic Light, lauren. I promise I won't tell Coach Winterberg!

When they're on, tho, Coptic Light can be like my favorite band ever.

A dude who lives in my dorm has a band that played with Coptic Light a few weeks ago. I went to see his band, who were decent, but Coptic Light were indeed pretty bad.

f
m
b
b

about 3 years ago (after he moved to SF from RI)...

YOU MIGHT KNOW HIM AS BROWN FROM PINK AND BROWN.

but still, the don cab stuff i really don't hear wrt: P&L (liek who's the fripp-wannabe in P&L????), the drummer is totally ft. thunder-esque, ef awl ewe. aaron dub's cousin holds down the melodies naturally he's the focus of all the crit here. not to say y'all aren't free to disagree but hey, pick on someone your own age.

hstencil: gembaku onanies = "those whose orgasms via masturbation are comparable to an atomic bomb explosion replete with mushroom cloud sprouting from the loins". the first hardcore band from japan. go see them live. it will all fall in to place.

dude! providence bands(fortthunderbands) do not have a distinctive drum sound! landed != Lightning Bolt != Olneyville Sound System != The White Mice.

Adam Autry, probably one of the only non-Chippendale drummers people have heard in large quantities, sounds NOTHING LIKE BRIAN. Where does this come from?

I don't think the drummer is, though, much like either of those bands (or sounds.) I'm pretty drunk now;---granted, the only P&L stuff I've heard recorded is their 7"; I don't listen to it much, but when I listen to it, I think the drums kind of remind me just a more traditional dubby/gr00vy rock band--swings like the stones but not without much purpose.

lvvvv yoouu.

We took our drummer to the hospital after Siren Fest. Brooklyn emergency medical care is THIRD WORLD, and sucks horribly. Other than that, Siren was cool, but the bands just aren't the point. Except Ted Leo, I love him.

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i hate the word i'm about to use, but "gold we're digging" is the most anthemic song i've heard this year that isn't "all my friends". i think it's in the production, the way the singer sounds so far away from you. it kinda feels like being at the way way back of an ampitheatre show or something, like you're almost being begged to yell the words right back.

also hits collegiate/post-collegiate angst (groan, i know) like "all my friends", like, yeah, there is something in the gold we're (i'm) digging, even though we (i) might not know what it is just yet.

i've been hesitant towards talking about Mapmaker here due to whiney's presence, but i fucking love the shit out of the record. it's something- i guess i'm gonna call it a pop-punk record with noise tendencies- that i didn't know i needed until i heard it. production is so superb, the playing is great, lyrics i can make out really hit. anyway now that the cats out of the bag so to speak, hats off whiney, shit is great.

i've been hesitant towards talking about Mapmaker here due to whiney's presence

Hahaha... So THAT'S why no one on this board ever appeared to give a shit about this band.

Say whatever you want. I might actually be the biggest fan of Dan and BJ's songwriting there is. From what very little I know about the lyrics, a lot of the Mapmaker stuff did kind of come from a similar place as "All My Friends," which is maybe why both songs hit me so hard.

And, Jordan, btw, thanks a ton for listening so close. It means a lot to me, and I was just the drummer, so I know the other two dudes would be stoked to hear it.

yeah np. tell those to dudes to make it out to missouri one of these days. when i made the connection that you were the drummer i was pretty new here so i didn't know if bringing up the record would be kosher or not. like just the other day j0hn d. was like "don't bring up my band" but tonight i just said fuck it.

i just heard these guys for the first time on some comp and they're great!

the song was "fractured sky"

i think i mentioned this before but one of my bros is the new drummer in this band :>

Jess Harvell and Alex in Baltimore put the cd in their 2007 top 10 lists for the Baltimore City Paper.

I love this band, but for me the Mapmaker standout is the Dismemberment-Plan-on-PCP "Brighter Days".

my favorite P&L song is "A Pleasant Stay" off Stay Afraid

talk about anthem

this record is still neck and neck with lcd for my favorite alb of the year.

Should have stolen the record from my ex

I need to put on Mapmaker some more. I got it and listened a couple times and was like "yeah this is good it sounds like Stay Afraid" and it went back in the pile

You guys are super.

Stay Afraid was my favourite album of last year and this thread is reminding me to feel guilty that it's already the time of year for people to start making best-of lists and it's been so busy I haven't managed to give Mapmaker more than one listen yet. Also, some great tracks on the split with Tyondai Braxton, which I hope all those Battles fan kids are tracking down right now.

And I only realised who Whiney was after I'd been excited about the split for some time, saw them live (excellent show) and took the newly released Stay Afraid home and read the liner notes, and now if I manage to see them live again (I hope I will) you're not the drummer any more and I missed my chance to embarrass us both in public with stumbling "so... you're that guy... that's pretty cool" non-conversation. Which is just as well, I guess.

I "met" Whiney for the first time what, a month ago?

Yep. On the last day of CMJ!

I heard a band -- from Philly -- ripping off a P&L synth riff!

Whiney were you the 2nd drummer of P&L?

Glad somebody revived this, as I've been meaning to for a while. Damn, I love this band! Mapmaker and Stay Afraid are two of my very favorite records of right this moment now. So catchy, anthemic, freaky & great! Reminds me off the best things about Zen Arcade era Husker Du (best things in this case = all of them). Funny that people continue to say "noise band", 'cuz it seems totally off the mark at this point. I just hear rock, spazz, rock.

Thank you, Whiney, though I don't know you. You rules, this rules, aaaaahg flaggl.

Whiney were you the 2nd drummer of P&L?

third!

thx contederizer!

They're writing their fourth album right now.

And that fourth album is pretty frickin' spectacular so far, based on a first listen.

the last one was great so i'm v interested

me too. i heard some demos awhile back (the drummer is a good friend of mine) but not the final product yet.

They are a four piece now?

saw this band on Friday in Brighton and thought they were brilliant. Loved the way they affected to make a venue that holds maybe fifty people feel like an epic concert space.

I saw them last week in Glasgow and agree that they were awesome. I can never get all that excited by the albums, but live they're totally kick-ass.

http://krakow.zenfolio.com/img/v5/p950898040-3.jpg

More Parts & Labor photos

So, I only know the fuzzpoppy stuff, but did these guys used to be a noise band or is this the No Age type "noise" thing. Serious question, really like the last album, would be intrigued by a power electronics backstory.

did these guys used to be a noise band

nah not really. they were less poppy when they were a duo though

this is off their first lp, Groundswell
http://www.partsandlabor.net/mp3/partsandlabor_gs.mp3

I actually love the singing on this album, but then crooked indie vocals are something I totally stan for.

stan and deliver

stan and receiver

hey how's the new one? love P&L but kinda wary about the Fridmann production. thoughts?

An announcement from Parts & Labor in their own words:

Dear friends,

This January, Parts & Labor turns 10 years old. We're planning a string of celebratory shows, in which we play selected material from all of our full length albums, leading up to a big 10th anniversary blow out on February 24th, 2012.

Following these performances, we're going to take an extended hiatus. We feel incredibly fortunate having had a decade of amazing experiences -- making records and new friends, performing with so many killer musicians and artists. But it's time for each of us to focus
on personal projects for a while. We're all going to continue to make music through other endeavors.

We'd like to thank everyone who's supported us, bought our albums, seen us live, offered us a floor to sleep on. We love y'all. As a token of our esteem, we're giving away a final song called "No Nostalgia (featuring Todd Bailey and Where's The Party At)", which was recorded during the Receivers sessions, but suddenly seems all too prescient.

Love,
Dan/BJ/Joe (Parts & Labor)

And now Whiney can arrange for that big ol' cover story.

they had a good run! hopefully i'll get to see them again on this last run. haven't listened to the last album enough, i didn't even know it was produced by Fridmann until reading ilxor's post upthread just now.

just mixed by him iirc

stoked for their (last?) show tomorrow night

i heard this show will be...cool

i heard it hasn't sold out yet

really wish i could make the trip up for it

http://www.thelmagazine.com/newyork/parts-and-labor/Content?oid=2214280

this is neat but lol how pissed can you imagine a certain someone being at the band being described as "Fugazi with ‘effed-up keyboards"

they're more like She & Him Meets Fugazi With Effed Up Keyboards, right?

why hello giggles

lol @ the difference in verbosity between whiney's and joe's interview

i'm also getting a kick out of watching them play double drums on youtube

deaf. great show

Long-ass press release, but the news has been a long time coming:

After a 15-year hiatus, prismatic noise-punk fireworkers Parts & Labor, a beloved institution of Brooklyn's '00s underground, re-emerge with a double-drummer lineup and colossal double album, Set of All Sets, out July 10 on Ernest Jenning Record Co. The 79-minute album is an expansive, blown-out gush of apocalypse-pop that imagines utopias and confronts the overwhelming weight of the infinite.

The band has shared the album's lead singles “Endless Cycle Pts. 1 - 4” which are available across all digital platforms. The “Endless Cycle” comprises four songs, two apiece from the band’s principal songwriters (BJ Warshaw and Dan Friel), kicking off each of the album’s two halves. From the earliest demos, the band knew these songs were defining mission statements for the record and this iteration of Parts & Labor. “These songs are mirrors in all manner of ways,” the band explains. “Reflective and fragmented, this is our attempt at epitomizing the band we always strove to be. The “Endless Cycle” is us.”

Their first album since 2011, Set of All Sets finds the band re-energized, rebooted and expanding their punk-kosmische, matching their skyscraping melodies and squelching electronics with hypnotic rhythms and frenzied tumbles of percussion. Parts & Labor co-founders Dan Friel and BJ Warshaw are joined by the simultaneous battery of drummers Christopher Weingarten and Joe Wong — asynchronous members during their critically acclaimed four-album run on indie rock titans Jagjaguwar. The power trios that made 2007's breakthrough Mapmaker and 2011's swan song Constant Future have merged into a single four-piece, at once a brand new vision, a clamorous continuation and a recapturing of the deafening sound of their "final" two shows in 2012. With eight weaponized limbs from two veteran drummers, Parts & Labor surges forth with rhythms inspired by Tanzanian singeli, ecstatic free improv and the motorik of vintage krautrock.

Friel and Warshaw beam with the most majestic and triumphant melodies of their career, windswept cascades of bubblegum Boredoms and Big-Music-gone-hardcore. Weingarten and Wong alternate between propulsion and chaos: Snares and roto-toms ping-pong across the stereo spectrum, junk percussion clatters and tumbles, robotic rhythms collide with frantic machine-gun blurs. As latticework rhythms cycle and distort, the group's three-part harmonies puzzle through lyrics about feedback loops, indecisiveness, the Anthropocene and quantum theory, all shouted through the language of rock anthems.

More than a decade since announcing their “indefinite hiatus,” the band returns against all odds: Brooklyn's soaring rents have driven most of its members miles from their homebase and each other, Warshaw lives under the shriek of crippling tinnitus, the concept of "forming a band" becomes less of an economic viability every year, and both the music industry and world at large have essentially imploded. In turn, a band already steeped in paradoxes — noise and pop, ambient and punk, storm and calm — have created an album about building the impossible. "What if we built a house no one can live in," Friel sings in thrash-pop blast "Haunted Limbs." What if we wrote a song no one could play?" Songs like the Verhoeven-esque "Better Run" and percussion-phase ballad "Anti-Lions and Lemonade" invent utopias, a fitting vision for an album that conjures a punk orchestra from four musicians.

The album's first single, “Endless Cycle” is the album’s maximalist scaffolding: a four-part, 20-minute epic split across the album's halves. The three-part "Descending" suite exploits the Shepard tone illusion to dizzying ends. The chord progression is constantly falling, never resolves and is designed to loop infinitely. The feeling of moving while staying in the same place conveys the feeling of our current social and political reality: sinking deeper into the mire of techno-fascism but made to believe that we’re progressing to some grand, utopian future. The album's epic climax is a shout-along that's equal parts catchy and contradictory: “Forever … For never.”

“If some certain quantum theories are true, everything that might exist, does exist through parallel universes. Grappling with that feels simultaneously full of promise and struck with grief, that anything is possible, but also that this is the universe we’re stuck with," says Warshaw "We wanted to turn towards promise, to build this thing against so, so many odds. To fight against our own inertia and fraying hope.”

From 2002 to 2012, Parts & Labor were an oppositional, exultant, D.I.Y. blare in the subterranean Brooklyn of loft parties, parking lot shows, musty warehouse spaces, $10 cover charges, sweaty handstamps and Todd P emails. While "NYC revival" bands gobbled glossy magazine spreads, Parts & Labor were leading lights of a noisier, scruffier, more art-damaged shadow economy alongside musicians like Black Dice, Oneida, Sightings, the USA Is a Monster, Zs, Tyondai Braxton, Aa, Japanther and more. Fusing neon pop hooks and the blistering squall that Friel coaxed from his upcycled Yamaha Portasound toy keyboard, the iconoclastic Parts & Labor were outsiders that could have existed alongside '80s SST bands, '90s Japanese noise units or ramshackle 22nd Century post-apocalypse wasteland troubadours. The anti-imperialist rhetoric in songs like "Stay Afraid," "Fractured Skies," and "Satellites" stood in sharp contrast to a music world bending towards dance-punk escapism and indie-rock introspection.

"It’s curious how little of the indie music from the aughts concerned itself with politics," author Ronen Givony writes in the recently released Us V. Them: The Age of Indie Music and a Decade in New York (Abrams Books). "For all the ruptures, chaos, and tragedy of the Bush era… the cultural response amounted to a collective numbness, trauma, and grief. No music stood in contrast to this tendency more than Parts & Labor."

In their decade of existence they released five albums and carried the Minutemen's "jam econo" torch through relentless, van-destroying tours across the U.S., Europe and Japan, playing shows with Mission of Burma, The Fall, TV on the Radio, Deerhoof, Battles, Melt-Banana, Lightning Bolt, Titus Andronicus, Oneida and many more. Their final bow, held at Brooklyn's 285 Kent in February of 2012, was a cacophonic send-off that united Weingarten and Wong on one stage and ended with the audience tearing the stage to pieces.
During the following 14 years, Dan Friel has released eight albums for avant-rock lodestar Thrill Jockey: four toy-keyboard scuzz-pop solo excursions and four LPs with his interstellar power trio Upper Wilds. Joe Wong has become an in-demand film and TV composer, penning the music for Emmy-winning shows like Russian Doll and Master of None alongside releasing a pair of psychedelic pop solo outings. BJ Warshaw has been co-running a multidisciplinary artist retreat, LEVEL, in a former Boy Scout cabin in Chapel Hill, NC since 2016. Christopher Weingarten has maintained a formidable career as a music writer and recently launched the all-star "artisanal white noise" app Fuzzzel.

However, the forces that Parts & Labor roared against in the '00s — war theatrics, the politics of fear, gentrification, American imperialism — remain an ongoing, metastasizing threat. Their return was inevitable, if only to drive more feedback into the feedback loop.

“It felt like all the things we were worried about back in the day – techno-fascism, authoritarianism, rapacious capitalism, societal division – were coming true if not getting worse," says Warshaw. "Reuniting has been a lifeline. The doing is the antidote.”

Tour Dates:

July 24 - Los Angeles, CA @ Zebulon
July 26 - San Francisco, CA @ Bottom Of The Hill
August 7 - Ridgewood, NY @ TV Eye
August 8 - Ridgewood, NY @ TV Eye

Fingers crossed for more dates, I never managed to see 'em back when

Out today!

https://partsandlabor.bandcamp.com/album/set-of-all-sets

great thread.

nice! congrats wgw!

thanking u ums

Whoa, cool. I feel like I never listened to P&L enough back in the day, will make up for it now. Any plans to play outside the States?

We're hoping but we're touring as a six-piece band for this record so... $$$

nice wgw!

Happy record release day WGW!

Whiney, I won’t give you shit about playing SF instead of Oakland… will try to make it out.

me as well

Ohmigod - sign me up for all of this. Which of my tattered P&L spray paint tour shirts do I whip out.

Hell yeah Whiney stoked to listen to this!!!

I had no idea a Parts & Labor comeback album was exactly what I needed, but this is sublime! Among many other nice things, it's so great to hear a band that remembers Boredoms.

Congrats on getting the band back together. My immediate reaction listening to the record was "no one makes music like this anymore!"

i got my own college radio show right around the time Mapmaker came out and it left a massive mark on me.

also "The Gold We're Digging" is begging for Paramore to cover it.

Thanks so much all

Congrats on getting the band back together. My immediate reaction listening to the record was "no one makes music like this anymore!"

― Jordan s/t (Jordan), Monday, July 13, 2026 10:51 AM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Thanks, yeah, jury is still out on whether that's going to be a feature or a bug.

whoa i love this!

beautiful christian rock record. j/k. i'm a chump for never listening to parts and labor apparently! i love this album though and i'm rooting for this band. i hope this year is your time for a victory lap.

Wait what the FUCK just happened during this opening track

Whiney did you make this for me or something

Missed the boat on Parts and Labor originally (shame on me), but the few tracks I sampled off the new one are outstanding. Now I'm holding out for my physical copy to get here to absorb the whole thing.

Love you guys!

Yeah, Imago, when BJ played me the demo for that song I almost cried because it's like, I can't believe I get to be in this band

this is a fucking insane album

imago, how do I get the dudes like you to pay attention

it's all so siloed

i have already alerted some of my Discord cells

<3

it's all underground resistance these days whiney, that does make it cooler though doesn't it. less financially rewarding, but cooler

For sure, I mean P&L was never a money-earner for me, outside of the occasional $40 ASCAP check. I definitely don't have any illusions of a bunch of guys pushing 50 becoming the new Turnstile, I just want there to be enough demand that we can play more than these four shows and maybe put out record #7

so many good songs but Endless Cycle 4 into Indecision Tree is utterly heroic stuff my god

the secret ingredient is andrew wk obv. i approve, a lot

"Indecision Tree"! "We watch it grow." Ain't it so, Song/track of the year so far: like If Kevin Ayers x cusp Eno could get really heavy, positively crunchy, and keep growing. Hope Anglophile Classic Rock comparisons/pipe dream extensions are OK, because gotta say that "Arterial Material" kicks off my first-listening fave rave subset, like if the Beatles could have kept pushing themselves/Lennon kept lashing them in this direction, cont. w "Antio-Lions and "Lemonade," the ever-apt "Descending" recurrence, "Endless Cycle Pt. 3." jump to "I.T.," while jangletroninc jaunt of "Like They're Here Tp Stay" and intriguing build of title track could have advabced Who's Next maybe too mch for the villagers, but only on first listen.
Who are you re touring line-up? Only seeing the basic four in press notes.

"Anti-Lions," sorry.

It’s going to be BJ, Dan and me with Clara from Starring (g), Pete from Sunwatchers (b) and Nick from Black Hollies (d)

OMG a Sunwatcher, thanks!

I was also gonna say, there's some Trail of Dead and a LOT of Secret Machines in here too. If you remember Secret Machines fondly, tap in

I did share it on the Cardiacs Facebook page a few days ago fwiw, it's pretty congruent with a lot of ppl's listening habits on there.