Featuring JM & P / Parade Ground | Interview by Ruud Dreessen aka ebm-industrial.nl | 08 Jan 2009
Thanks JM (Jean-Marc) & P (Pierre Pauly) / Parade Ground that you have found time to give answers to these questions
Tell one secret about yourself or the band that you have never told to anyone?
JM- We're angels but nobody knows it ...(Angels play in our place on stage )
P- Through this we do not belong to art anymore.Have we created anything already? Were we born? Are we sure of being really dead after our suicide? The past is what remains in a mirror .
how and why did you come about starting Parade Ground? what else inspires you to create? Parade Ground was formed in 1982
P- To vomit an act,a vertigo ...
JM- The french movies from before the second world war,particularely the films of Marcel Carné,Jean Renoir,René Clair inspire us a lot.Surrealism.Dadaïsm.Futurism...Joseph Beuys.Marcel Duchamps.Man Ray.We played our first gig under the name Parade Ground in '81,actually...
P- It isn't that much a matter of knowing,rather than being born.There is always the question of the receptibility of our music.Its absolute receptibility,its very existence.It has always been very tedious,since the begining.We always wanted to put ourselves in danger,bumping into the objects,pearcing the madness,We always created together,Yes,that what interested me...It was a sort of very physical magma,which still interesses me,with a supplement of soul,the voice.We have always had a certain duality in our music:between a kind of sickening eagerness,a very aggressive music,and the voice has always been the link between the two styles of music that we have always had.What remains is always the vocal line of Jean-Marc ...
Let's talk about your full album - 'Rosary' where did the concept come from? and whats planned now that your album is finished? upcoming shows or anything else you're working on with Patrick Codenys Front 242?
JM- We have never stopped creating.We wanted to make a last sign with our skin,our anguish,our guts.Music must be treated as life,an open sore.
P- It's got to come out:all the rage,the tension,the vomit.We always knew that we would never achieve that.It will always be a frame,an unfinished body,as life.This record represents 20 years of suffering,with the intensity,the blood,the cloistering,the psychiatry,the blows,the howlings,the punched jaw,the cuttings,the prayer,the screaming head,the struggle into cruelty,the blows,the crawling.I think that ugliness makes everything bearable,the beauty of repulsion,we have gone to the core of mental experimentation.The madness abolishes the truth.The aesthetism of nausea .
How is the current promotional tour going for supporting this album?
JM- The album is a real press success.More than 60 reviews so far.The rest depends from one country to another .
P- To me,our music is very litterary...We are like cursed poets...We do know very well that we will never be recognized .
JM- Our step has always been to make things as if it were for the last time...
P- We don't like promoting,explaining,defining...To us,the numbers are dead once they have been recorded...It's very much like paintings,meat carcasses hanging to the walls...All that shit that should be burned up,odds and ends to throw into the fire right away...All this doesn't interest us at all .
Can you tell us a bit more about the musical projects,bands and leden Patrick Codenys Front 242 you were involved with prior to Parade Ground?
JM- We met Patrick Codenys who saw us performing live in Brussels in ' 81.It all started then.First single,first giggs with Front 242 .
P- Daniel ... He's always been a very close friend ... great accomplices ... We are also friends with Patrick Codnys ...We have written and composed the vocals of their albums 'Up evil' and 'Off'.Wich has made our friendship even tighter.We are friends with Colin Newman/Wire,a great musician and a true gentleman .
Out of all of your albums, which album would you say is your favorite album? Why?
JM- The album 'Rosary',without a doubt.Because it sums up years of suffering psychatrical and mystical experiments .
P- We have lived out psychiatrical experiments,the cloistering,like an unbearable torsion...As eating up one's brain ...The raw head ...
J-M relate these experiments in 'Rosary' ...These devoured acts ... The fulgurating force of these places ... Like this time when an old lady,an inmate,gave me the breast the whole night through ...
Can you tell us a bit more about this Their first release came in 1983 under the wings of Daniel B. and Patrick Codenys from Front 242, aware of Parade Ground's talent and potential; they did collaborate to almost all Parade Grounds records and even released some material on MASK Records (Front 242's own label in the early days).
JM- Patrick C.spotted us in concert and very quickly,we were in the studio with Daniel,recording a three tracks E.P. for the label New Dance After this,because Front 242 believed in our talent and potential,came several releases produced by Daniel B.( 3 maxis : 'man in a trance 'Took Advantage' and 'Dual Perspective' )'Dual Perspective'also gave us the opportunity to work with Colin Newman ( Wire ) who produced Five numbers for us .
What is currently inspiring your material as an artist?
P- One doesn't ask a corpse what it is doing in its coffin ! One doesn't put a label on something vomited .We'll never be interested in music.I really couldn't quote an influence.There still is a duality in our music,but for us only emotion,yelling and rage do matter.To put oneself in danger.Whatever the style,until the asphyxiation of thought .We always do it as if it were for the last time , as if our life depended on it .There has always been a venomous necessity in every artistic act.For us,one must always instillate the venom,the sourness in all you do .
JM- A number is never finished... Done... We are all unfinished beings.One must always be off balance.Off balanced - An inward savagery ...
what is the key to making music from Parade Ground'? and what inspires you to keep growing as a musician?
JM- We psalmodiate and shout out our anger.Using a stump... Melody,emotion,sincerity.The vocals are the link between now and what we did before ...
P- We have thought Rosary as a musical collage,sound installations.Brutality,rage,something vomited,a musical abstraction.The only sounds that interest us are howling and shouting.Those are the only extreme and important sounds . All the numbers on Rosary are based on howling and shouting.We composed the album in an instinctive,primitive,tribal,physical way.We do scan and psalmodiate,hitting on a stump with a hammer to try and find out a rythm ,a link between the yellings.Our music is an irrepressible vomiting,a terrible suffering,a suffering act.Rosary is a constant clash,like some installations,performances such as Man Ray's rayogrammes of Joseph Beuys 'Fluxus,or the cutting out of thought of writters such as W.Burroughs,J.Joyce 'stream of consciousness . Rigault,Tzara,Crevel,the 'waiting' of Samuel Beckett,Robert Pinget .
What ideas, movements and personalities would you say were crucial for the definition and development of Parade Ground'as a creative entity?
P- Faith,psychiatric experience,living in a monastery,Antonin Artaud,translating visual emotions in music .
JM- That's it;A translation.That's we always intented to do.We see this as a transposition,as a performance.When one speaks about'cursed poets'that means cursed by whom ?
P- It' a litterary transposition,but plastical too.A graphic and visual work.We have met legends like Marciel Mariën or Philippe Soupault,whom I have met in Paris,with all these affiliations:Tzara,Roger Gilbert-Lecomte,Man Ray,Breton,Marcel Broothaers,Crevel,Duchamp is the greatest;he passed from impressionism to the piss-house, that's formidable,that's what we have tried to transpose in music.The truth of the unreal,the carnage,the tension , th blows,the wrenching,the anxiety,the terror .
If there was one thing you want people to know about your band what would
that be?
P- Explaining,is justifying oneself.And justify is prostituting oneself.One doesn't have to explain one's suffering,the nausea,the emotion,the rage,that terrible rottennness.That's it,vomiting is giving everything,as is the yelling of our music,an uncontrollable vomitting...We see all that as an aggression.We really want to assault the audience , the listener,to make them rotten,to vomit on them,we want to assault the people,to dirty them,terrify them,to hurt them,try to destroy them.They must feel oppressed by it.They must be scared and oppressed.Until the choreography of chaos .
Tell us a little bit more about Parade Ground'What do you do in your spare time?
JM- Writing/poetry/collages,we build castles of light ...
P- We could create another way ...We could make it through another media.It could be in litterature,or through painting,or theater.There is only the rage,the cruelty,the vomiting that matters to us...The brutal rage,the tension, scream,yell,cut,lacerate,massacre...One yells or criaes out only in the important moments of life...Birth...Death ... Pain...Happiness...Rage...Anger...
while electro is your main musical pallet,what other music do you listen to?
JM- Mainly classical music .
P- We listen to a lot of sounds ...Dialogues,noises...All things with an impact,never heard before ...
How long have you been in the music industry and how has it changed over time?
JM- We've never been in the music industry!...We knew a period when business was out of control.Now it's all gone very gentle again.
P- We have always been on the fringe of art.The great difference,is that now,anybody's got the material to make music or sounds,anybody plays an instrument,anybody is an artist.There is a great lack of spontaneity,taking risk, this hazardous side.Creating is de-learning.get rid of the others'work.As we began,we didn't want to play old numbers.We're no human jukeboxes.We don't want to be applauded.Suffering or nausea is not a thing that should be applauded.I think that both on stage or listening to Rosary,people feel assaulted,provoked,the impression of receiving something vomited on you,with all this rage,this tension,this trance,this primitive anger,all that fury,the choreography of chaos .
JM- We force them to think.We put them in danger.One mustn't achieve a piece of art but be the piece of art itself,to submerge oneself,to be,totally.We have been surprised that people and media have a real interest in what we do now.It has intriged them,called them on.They're shocked,of course.They recognized the rage,the singularity,the intensity,the provocation.You must never try to understand or be understood.Being understood is prostituting oneself .
Can you tell us something about the beginnings of Parade Ground' how and why did you begin to make music? Why various electronic styles? tell us about your unique style of music and who are your major influences? Where do you typically get your inspiration for numbers?
JM- P.G. began with the daylight .
Are you working on any current or future projects?
P- We are always on the move...In creativity.We would like to compare the versions of our old numbers with the vision that wa have of them now.Releasing all of our yet unreleased numbers.What matters to us is the stage;to us,that's where everything happens...With this morbid rage..The impression of vomiting in the audience.One must hit the brain directly.A diddimetry of the thought... To dive in a state of trance...The stage,is the art of disappearing...Go out of tune...Tear one's body out... An impregnating corrosion... A corrosive rage ... One must put one's skin on the table,one must pay .
On question about influences and inspirations about Belgian?
JM- We see the soul,not the identity card .
It has been a pleasure to interview you on your musical activity,Well,any last words to your ebm-industrial fans? and what is next on the the Belgian agenda?
P- One must keep the childhood...Afterwards,it will be like an enormous light...The echo of a feast...We will never achieve that... It will always be a frame...An unfinished body,as life...The danger grows with the use.Cruelty never ends .
Stutter is one song taken from the new album of Parade Ground entitled 'Rosary' and produced by Patrick Codenys (Front 242).Clip produced by Le Studio & YVRO Production
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