When Parts & Labor played its final show in 2012, fans literally dismantled the stage. It was an appropriately chaotic conclusion to one of the most uncompromising bands of the post-millennial DIY era. In the years that followed, the members of the Brooklyn noise-rock institution settled into new creative lives as composers, writers, producers and musicians. Meanwhile, the scene that nurtured them largely disappeared.
Parts & Labor spent the better part of five years constructing Set Of All Sets (Ernest Jenning), a sprawling 79-minute double album built around a new twin-drummer lineup that maximalizes the band’s signature collision of melody, noise and electronics.With a mission statement that values immersion over efficiency, Parts & Labor’s sixth studio release sounds like a flat-out refusal to accept the shrinking expectations of modern music culture.
MAGNET’s Hobart Rowland gets the skinny on the band’s defiantly oversized reunion statement from co-founders Dan Friel and BJ Warshaw.
First, the obvious: After almost 15 years away, what convinced you that now was the right time for a Parts & Labor reboot?
Friel: We stayed friends, we stayed in touch. The world took a turn, and it felt like if we were ever gonna do something again, this was the time. Five years after starting that process, the synchronicity of new music from friends like Tyondai Braxton and Neptune, the renaissance of friends like TV On The Radio and the release of Ronen Givony’s book about that era of Brooklyn all feel like coming home.
Each of you has built different creative lives. What have those experiences brought to the latest version of Parts & Labor?
Friel: We were all excited about that aspect of it—the way (drummer) Joe (Wong’s) work as a composer, engineer and singer has grown, the way (drummer) Chris (Weingarten) has kept his ear to the ground as a writer, my continued output with other projects. And then BJ was a total wild card, teaching himself to mix this double-drums double album, on top of writing a bunch of amazing new songs. It just added up to more than we were capable of back in the day.
Set Of All Sets began taking shape in 2021, when, as you put it, “everything was fucked.” How did dreaming up utopias become more compelling than documenting the chaos around you?
Friel: I felt like I was losing the ability to picture our world getting better—and as a parent now, that felt especially shitty … like the Overton window was just moving straight down. I spent some time reading about 19th-century utopian colonies and thinking about that mindset of just knowing a perfect world is around the corner and, crucially, working toward it. There are already angrier, younger bands documenting the chaos around us in the way that it needs to be done. I felt like our contribution needed to be something else.
This album is almost 80 minutes long. Why make something so unapologetically sprawling?
Friel: We have a lot to say. We have a lot of ideas.
BJ Warshaw: I also think this record is explicitly our statement in opposition to the implied disposability of music in the streaming and AI era. Plus, our heaviest influences and favorite albums tend toward both the unapologetic and the sprawling. There’s lineage here.
“Endless Cycle” serves as the album’s architectural framework. How did this 20-minute beast come about?
Friel: The four sections of “Endless Cycle” came together as two halves, with BJ’s parts one and two intended to be connected and my parts three and four built almost as one song. We were both looking to write longer, more expansive versions of what P&L had done in the past. When they were written, it was pretty obvious they were the backbone of this thing we were building.
Tell us more about how the double-drummer thing came about. When did you realize the concept was crucial to the new LP?
Friel: We knew it from the start. On one hand, we needed a new element to keep from leaning on nostalgia, from repeating ourselves. Beyond that, we needed to surpass what we did at our last shows in 2012. That was when we introduced Chris and Joe playing drums together, and I think we unanimously viewed that as about the best thing the band ever did. Having two drummers has let us explore all kinds of ideas we’d never done, building off our influences from Boredoms, Melvins and a million other percussion-heavy bands.
BJ, you have spoken openly about living with severe tinnitus. How did it affect the way the group approached making this LP?
Warshaw: My tinnitus was bad going in, but it just happened to worsen significantly right as the reunion and writing/recording process started. I got fitted for hearing aids in late 2022, which has been a game changer. Essentially, they boost frequencies I’ve lost, so the tinnitus—which is thought to be a neurological phenomenon of the brain overcompensating for hearing loss—has been fairly diminished. Wearing them was a hit to my pride at first, but I’ve come to really rely on them. They were honestly helpful for uncountable hours spent mixing the album. I also discovered that, when I hold them close, they create a cricket-like feedback noise, which I recorded and used—along with samples from my audiology testing—in “Arterial Material.” That said, the condition is no fucking joke. While I wore earplugs for most of my touring life, there were many years where I was not as consistent as I could’ve been. So let this also be a PSA: Wear hearing protection. Seriously.
Set Of All Sets manages to tackle weighty themes like techno fascism, the climate crisis and authoritarianism without feeling didactic. What’s the secret to writing politically without turning songs into editorials?
Friel: It’s heartening that you think we pulled that off. Giving a specific human perspective helps.
Warshaw: I think part of it is that we’re not shouting solutions at people, even when we’re encouraging them to rise up or think differently. And we tend to trade more in imagery and ideas over citing specific names or events that date the material. But speaking from experience still counts, and even in my most lyrically obtuse moments, I’m thinking of something specific even if it goes unnamed. I feel a queasy pride over how well some of our lyrics from 20 years ago are holding up. It would be a better world if they were less relevant now.
Parts & Labor came out of a specific Brooklyn DIY scene. Looking back, what do you think that community had that today’s indie-music world has lost?
Friel: We had access to more performance spaces per square mile than most scenes probably ever get. That was a huge difference. We also had a much more robust online music ecosystem full of active, independent sites, blogs and message boards.
Your final show in 2012 ended with the audience tearing apart the stage. How does returning after such a definitive finish sit with you now?
Friel: It felt daunting at first, creating something that was worthy of returning after that. But having spent five years making our first double album, and having sat with it for a while now, it sits extremely well.
See Parts & Labor live.