With Daft Punk As Mentors & Milla Jovovich A Fan, Parcels Are 'Pretty Lucky'

At the time of The Music's chat, we find Parcels bassist Noah Hill "back at home in Berlin", the German capital that houses Berghain, which is guarded by notoriously ruthless bouncers. Given that the exclusive club's dress code is all-black and alternative, with blond hair generally a no-no, we've just gotta know whether Hill has ever passed through Berghain's doors. "I have," he laughs. "I kind of knew what I had to wear. I mean, I went at - I think I ended up lining up at 5am or 6am, after already partying a little and so the fear was kind of lost at that point." Good tunes, though, hey? "It's, like, the best."

But Hill admits joining the Berghain queue "is a high-pressure situation and I don't really like to do it a lotta the time, 'cause you can't go in there with your friends; it's, like, always a solo mission. I've kind of lost the enjoyment of it, but it's fun the first few times." So how did he conceal his long, blond surfy locks? "My hair was tied up inside a beanie, make-up on, collar around my neck," he chuckles. 

When Parcels first relocated to Berlin, they didn't take a lot of musical equipment over with them, Hill tells. "We pretty much sold all our stuff in Australia and then bought new things when we moved here, and that was the fun part about it: when we got to Berlin we were all buying new instruments, and finding places to rehearse, and kinda starting from scratch again."

So just how grim were their lodgings at first? "The first three months we were staying in Airbnbs together just sharing, like, a one-bedroom apartment between five of us. It was pretty tight." Just the one bathroom, then? "Yeah," he confirms, "so we really got to know each other in those first three months. It was a pretty tight-knit unit at the beginning and luckily we just became super-close rather than, you know, hating each other. 

"And then I remember my first house in Berlin, I was living with Louie [Swain, keys] and that was really grim. And we didn't have heating in the winter and it was a dirty, very typical Berlin place and cheap rent; like, it was our own two-bedroom apartment and all the boys would be coming and going, and people would be sleeping on the floor, and those first two years were pretty funny."

On what kind of rations they were living on when times were particularly tough, Hill recalls, "I remember, like, for a lot of mornings it was fried potatoes on toast with paprika for breakfast. That was the lowest moment, yeah. I look back on it with fondness, but I'm really happy I'm not there now."

"We'd heard rumours that [Daft Punk] were coming, some people were saying that they were coming and, yeah! We were pretty excited, but also it's kinda too big to even believe."

The contrast between what Hill describes and the natural paradise Parcels chose to move away from could not be more stark. Check out their Tieduprightnow music video, which Hill reveals "was all filmed in Byron, like, 'round the corner from all of our houses". The clip features picturesque coastline, lifesavers, Speedos and even a Chiko Roll. We can't help but wonder whether international journalists ask them about this Australian delicacy. "No, they don't really seem to get the aesthetic of it, really, as much as we'd like - the kind of Australianness of it; they just see it like a fun, surfy, happy-go-lucky music video, I think," he laments. "But the concept was really for us to be in the Australian landscape, but kinda passing though it in a way, 'cause that's how we feel when we go back - we're not really a part of Australian culture as much as we used to be and we're a little bit outside of it, 'cause we've been living over here for so long. And we're kind of looking at, you know, all the wilderness and the culture of Australia from an outside perspective, but I don't think that was really achieved, in the video." We're tipping that watching it must be like receiving a postcard from home for the band, then. "Pretty much, haha, I prefer not to watch it." 

They just released their self-titled debut album in October, but Parcels had already collaborated with Daft Punk on their track Overnight (which the band performed on Conan in December of last year) back in 2017. The story goes that the funky French robot duo - Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo and Thomas Bangalter - attended a Kitsune party Parcels performed at and were instantly impressed. On whether the band knew Daft Punk were in the house before they went on stage, Hill casually offers, "We'd heard rumours that they were coming, some people were saying that they were coming and, yeah! We were pretty excited, but also it's kinda too big to even believe, but we never would've imagined what would've happened next, you know. It was my first time in Paris and our first show and, yeah! We had no idea what was to come."

Reflecting on the series of events that led to this Byron Bay-bred quintet spending a couple of weeks collaborating with Daft Punk in their Parisian studio, Hill hesitates, "I think it's hard to - it's definitely luck, it's a whole bunch of things. We were pretty lucky, we were the right band at the right time and knowing the right people, and for them to do what they wanted to do at that time - which was probably to, you know, mentor a young band; it all just kinda came together."

In terms of what the takeaways were from these sessions, Hill shares, "The big thing's probably the kind of core aspect of songwriting; making sure that the song is good before you kind of dress it up with frills and bows, you know; making sure the simplicity - the very core of it - is a good song. That's something that they were aware of, through all genres. Always when we were in the studio they'd be pulling up songs from everywhere, they have such a good musical understanding and it was always about the kind of essence of the song and just pure songwriting."

Given that they've already collaborated with Daft Punk so early in their career, it probably wouldn't be too much of a stretch if Parcels were booked to play Berghain. "We were thinking about it," Hill enlightens. "It was our dream to do our album release party there, because our manager knows some of the people who run it and things, and he thought we might be able to do it; just inside the main hall, 'cause some live acts are doing it. Kylie Minogue did her album release party in the main hall at Berghain and we were so excited about it! But, I dunno what happened; I think we were just too, you know, blond, I guess [laughs]." Hmmm, perhaps in the lead-up to the release of their second album Parcels should all just dye their hair black then? "Yeah, just dye our hair, give 'em the photo of our look and then rock up and then we're blond on the day," he laughs, before cheekily adding, "Too late to cancel, yeah."