In advance of their performance at the Oxford Art Factory 3rd Birthday Party in August, guitarist
and vocalist
Tim Jenkins of
Sydney band Parades was kind enough to sit down with Aaron Diaz! He discussed various topics ranging from their punk roots to the elaborate
studio they had the pleasure and comfort of recording Foreign
Tapes in. Read on!

Hey Tim, how are you?

Good man, yourself?

Not too bad, what does Parades have lined up
over the next couple of months?

We’ve just wrapped up
our album tour but we still have a bunch of shows lined up. I think we are
going over to Perth a couple of times aswell, which is good because we have
never been there, but in the meantime we are just writing new stuff.

How was the FBi fundraiser you played at on the
weekend?

Yeah yeah yeah! That
was cool it was on Saturday.

Big turn out?

Yeah it sold out, I
think about 1100 people and they had to turn some people away.

It’s fair to say FBi is getting a lot of
support then?

Umm yeah heaps good
support, it’s really cool they had bands like Seekae and Kyü. But it was also
good to see Sydney people turn up, because you know how Sydney people don’t like
to turn up to events or whatever cultural events there seems to be a struggle
to get out. So yeah it was good, a good turn out

Speaking of people that don’t like to go to
cultural events, coming from The Hills (North-Western Sydney) myself…

[Interupts] Haha!
You’re a Hills person, cool cool!

What is it like coming from The Hills, which is
such a punk ridden area and writing music that is more in the atmospheric sort
of style?

I’ve actually moved
out of The Hills, but all of the dudes all live in The Hills still. Growing up
here years ago as we were going through school we played in a punk and hardcore
band together the four of us. We were always left of centre in that sort of
scene though and as time went on we grew out of it. So we started writing other
stuff and whatever we wanted to write and everyone else was still writing the
same old boring hardcore music. It’s kind of weird how The Hills is known for
that…strange.

Would you say it was a maturing of musical
tastes or you just got sick of it?

I know some of the
other dudes are still really into heavy music, personally the only heavy bands
I really listen these days is Converge or Dillinger Escape Plan or something
like that sort of hardcore. I just think it we just got bored of playing that
style and realised you can play heavy music with out playing heavy music if
that makes sense? Sonically you don’t always need to punch on the distortion
pedal to create something that’s emotionally heavy. So we just started
exploring other avenues and it turned into what it is now really.

So was this while you were still in school?

We finished school in
umm 2005 and a year after that we started writing new stuff, not so hardcore
music or anything like that just exploring different styles and that’s what
lead us into where we are now.

Would you say any of the hardcore stuff has an
influence in the Parades material or has it all definitely been left behind?

Yeah it definitely has
especially when we play live the energy is still there. Playing at these like
DIY shows when we were a lot younger, our main goal was to create as much
energy on stage as much as possible with little regard to how we played. We
just wanted to show that if you create some sort of energy it’s going to come
across to the audience, so I don’t think that has changed. If we have that sort
of energy on stage now the audience can sort of feed off it.

And in turn the band feeds of that energy.

Yeah yeah! There’s
some aspects of it that have stayed the same but very abstractly.

Yeah I’ve seen you guys a couple of times live
and the way you move on stage, if you shut out the sound it’s possible to
imagine you guys playing heavier music you know?

Yeah totally, we try
and create a vibe or whatever. Sometimes it’s hard and we can’t create that
vibe but sometimes it does happen, so if we’re on stage and we feel a vibe of
sorts hopefully that can be carried out to the audience and like you said we
can feed off each other.

The band has had a fairly quick growth coming
out of The Hills leaving the hardcore scene and moving into the new era. It’s
been like two years say from jamming in the garage to playing venues like
Oxford Arts?

To use I guess it
still seems like there have been so many times where thing could have been
moving forward a lot quicker and we were ready to do more shows because we had
all this material we needed to push forward, but there always seemed to be
other factors that held it back. I think it was a case of as long as we kept
working all the other things should fall into place. If that makes sense?

Yeah definitely. Speaking of the Oxford Arts the 3rd Birthday gig coming up, features a fairly big line up and you
guys firmly up the top there?

[Laughs] Someone sent
me the poster the other day and I saw us up the top the other day and thought
it was strange, but its pretty cool.

How many times have you guys played the venue?

Ooooh, getting up near
double figures now. We’ve done a fair few support slots there and also a few of
our own shows and also the gallery bar once. It’s a pretty sweet venue and in
term of logistics it’s a great venue, once it gets packed out you can
definitely get a great vibe from there.

I definitely think its one of the best venues
in Sydney at the moment…

Yeah I think its
great, not only for the public but also the bands aswell.

Not only does it attract the big bands that
tour but also the smaller Sydney bands…

Exactly, small Sydney
bands to huge international bands. Yeah it kind of seems like after The
Hopetoun closed, which sucked for Sydney but it has allowed venues like the Art
Factory to blossom. Hopefully more venues in Sydney pop up like it to support
the music scene here.

You guys had a gig at the Red Rattler the other
week is that correct?

Yeah! Yeah! That was
our Sydney album launch.

How do those sort of venues compare to those
other venues that are purpose built venues?

Well we chose the Red
Rattler to have our Sydney launch, we could have chosen  The Art Factory but just thought we’ve
played there a whole bunch of times. Have you ever been to the Red Rattler
before?

Nah, No I Haven’t.

Jono (Boulet) and I
had been there once before and it’s a really great venue. This group of artists
that transformed this warehouse, you go in there and it looks like a theatre it
doesn’t look like a warehouse. We wanted to do something a little bit different
and not a lot of Sydney bands play there. So we thought it would be cool to
play somewhere different.

What’s it like having someone (Jonathan Boulet)
who’s big in his own right in the band and Parades at the same time both vying
for that similar market? Do people ever say “Oh it’s that Jonathan Boulet guys
band” and do people ever mistake the two?

The four of us have
known each other since we were twelve and thirteen, so a lot of the things that
happen to us are really funny. I’ve never caught Jono on my life you know and
it’s this whole interesting dynamic, but I think its great that he can do his
stuff like at Come Together festival and then do what we normally do as group
for a long time. I think the two projects are hugely different in their own
right, so I think its good that Jono has that outlet and we can still do our
stuff. It’s amusing some of the stuff that goes on with us because we are still
the same dudes as we were before anyone knew any of us.

I’ve heard he also has his own studio, where
you guys also rehearse?

Because he was the
drummer during school and stuff, we use to jam one a week or whatever at his
house. At first we started up in his bedroom in the second floor of his parents
house and then they virtually kicked us out of there, so we migrated down to
his garage. We’ve been coming here for years just hanging out for years just
mucking around and jamming and what not. Over the years the four of us have
accumulated all this gear that we’ve kept in his garage. So we ended up just
practising in there and recorded most of the album in there also. When people
think of this studio in his house, it’s literally just a normal garage with a
bunch of musical equipment and a computer. It’s funny because we recorded most
of our album in there and he recorded most of his album in there everyone has
this idea of a magical garage, which is hilarious but on one side of the garage
is all his dad’s tool. It’s awesome and we are so grateful because his parents
have allowed us to take over this room in their house.

Now that there are albums coming out they must
be expecting a little bit of the money?

Every year as a band
we took the parents out for yum cha or something just to say thank you or a big
Christmas present for them in return for destroying their ears. But they’re
great and they are so happy for us to do what we do in their garage.

Is it good that that sort of financial pressure
isn’t there, whereas if you were at a proper studio you would have had to pay
up?

Yeah definitely, it is
a massive bonus. That whole money side of things has never really come into
play for what we do. I’ve friends and people I know in other bands and they
have to pay upfront or end up paying a couple of grand for a few days in the
studio, where it gets really tense and end up getting in there recording and
getting out. I couldn’t think of anything worse you know, whereas we can do
whatever we want, when we want and take as long as we want sort of thing. With
no one over us hounding us for money we have no distraction what so ever.

Did all the mixing and mastering happen there
as well?

With the mixing we all
sat down and Jono was behind the computer. We all had a creative say in it
telling him to turn this up or whatever, so Jono controlled it and we had a say
in directing how it sounded. Initially he then did a master but when the label
had a listen to it they suggested we get it mastered somewhere else. They
wanted someone who had been doing it for years, which ended up being one of the
best parts for me because one of the dudes who produced, mixed and mastered
Refused ‘A Shape of Punk To Come’. This was pretty exciting for us because
Refused are like heroes to us.

Did you get to meet the guy?

Nah, we didn’t he’s in
Sweden. It’s lucky how it happened because we had a deadline of a week and the
label told us we had to have to send this of and be mastered in a week. They
suggested this guy who had done a bunch of albums on their label and we didn’t
know and never heard of him, so we asked if we could ask around and we sent off
a few emails to people we would love to record with. He (Pelle Henricsson) got
back to us a few days later and in a week it was all done and it sounded
amazing. He did a ridiculously good job, he made it clearer and louder and
punchier.

Im running out of time but I have one more
question. Say if it was your birthday and you could curate a festival or gig,
who would you bring along whether they are still going around or dead?

[Laughs] Who would I
get to play? Umm I’ll rattle off a few names, I know once I finish I’m going to
be like damn I should have said this or that. Bjork, Tom Waits, Refused would
be playing. Surely Radiohead would get a gig. Umm who else The Drones, they are
amazing. Fuck Buttons they can come on board, Dirty Projectors. You name some!

Ooooh, umm..

[Laughs] See it’s
hard!

[Laughs]

It’s like when you go
to hire out a movie or a DVD or whatever. Once you get to the store its hard to
chose a movie.

I can guarantee I’ve
missed out all the bands I should have said,  but if those bands could come along that would be great.

Anyway, thanks for your time Tim.

No worries man. Bye!