Save The Parcs! | Quebec’s National Parcs head into the wild for unconventional music-video projects.
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When they set out to create their debut album, Montreal trio The National Parcs turned their backs on contemporary studio production and instead headed to the Quebec wilderness in search of a different approach.
Retreating to a remote chalet located near a wildlife reserve, video artist Ian Cameron and his bandmates were inspired by the stark Canadian landscape. Those images figure prominently on Timbervision, the CD/DVD the band released last year, which attempts to create an integrated audio-visual album experience.
“We really went into this open, without having a goal of what we specifically wanted to accomplish,” Cameron says. “Through the process, we’ve learned a lot about how to work in this way—how to send stuff back and forth between each other... like how Mac and PC systems sometimes don’t work well together.” But watch the video stream on their MySpace page, and the songs and the images mesh perfectly. The sighs of windblown trees, splashed water, and thrown kindling are the perfect accompaniment for the pulsing rhythms of their up-tempo, hip-hop-inspired folk.
“MusiquePlus [the MuchMusic of Quebec] gave us the Video of the Week honour one week,” Cameron says, “then the week after, it wasn’t played because it’s different both musically and texture-wise. It is closer to ‘video art’ than it is ‘music video.’ We’re in that fine line between art and commerce. We’re still learning about which direction we want to take the project in, and where the work exists, whether we can tread with one foot in either world.”
While the alternative music press has praised the results, some of the most enthusiastic responses the band has received have come from the artistic community. “We had our album launch at the Musée D’Art Contemporain de Montréal and the work is now being included in their Triennale video music series over the summer. We have a residency at a film festival in Normandy in September. We’re trying to figure out how an audio-visual project can work in the music industry and how it can work beyond the music industry. It was always a part of the goal to develop a live show, but it was a little bit difficult because the album was really a studio project. We hired some musicians; I hired a lighting designer and worked with a concept to bring MIDI-controlled lighting to the show, just to add another dimension to it all.”
But Cameron says The Parcs’ goal is to get people moving, even if the spectacle of their visuals occasionally stops them in their tracks. “We don’t like to play in places that have seats,” he says. “But at times we catch people not dancing and just looking up at what’s happing on the screen anyway.”
