Parallel Dance Ensemble

PDE

ION asked me to interview Parallel Dance Ensemble and to be honest I wasn’t sure how to approach the situation. If you take a look at my iPod you’re gonna get a lot of DJ Khaled, Birdman, Pusha T & OFWGKTA. But I mean, I grew up with a lot of Italian kids that liked dance music and glowsticks. And also, when I was nineteen I went to a few electro parties totally blacked out in hi-top Nike Dunks. I soon learned these were terrible points of reference and that I wasn’t wired properly to talk about music, per se, with these lovely people. So I relied on a few mainstays of human experience, like exotic bears and dance crazes.

How did the song “Shopping Cart” come about?
Coco Solid: It was part of a turbo recording session we did in New Zealand. It was fun…I don’t remember it being a particularly traumatic songwriting birth… it was ‘inside the mind of a gold-digger’. I think we both love ‘inside the mind of’ stuff.
Robin Hannibal Braun: Songs about gold diggers never get tiresome, especially if they are coming from the mouth of Coco Solid.

When was the last time you got ‘inside the mind’ of the Macarena?
C: December, with my grandmother in Samoa.
R: In the youth club, right after a cheek to cheek competition.

Which part of the Macarena was your favourite?
C: When you put your fingertips on your elbows. It has I Dream of Genie elements.
R: What was there not to like? It was any man’s dream!

What’s your favourite dance craze?
C: The hustle. Or the running man. I like grinding too.
R: The funky white man’s dance.

What’s the weirdest place you’ve ever slept?
C: In a fireplace. It was kinda nice.
R: In a bed where someone was having sex.

Yeah, those are weird places. Would you rather lose your legs or your arms?
R: Legs! Losing my arms would ruin my independence, and ability to make and write music.
C: I’d learn to live with the loss of either. Life is life.

Would you rather have a hovercraft or a jetpack?
R: Jetpack. not sure why. Just sounds way more cool.
C: Hovercraft with a bomb stereo. I’d wanna be a total futuristic jerk. Jet-pack life would be zen but kinda lonely.

Would you rather have a panda or a talking panda?
R: I’m not going to be greedy, so ill go for a regular panda.
C: Can one ever really have a panda?

If you had a talking panda what would you talk to him or her about?
R: I would get some lessons in how to be one with the nature, and how to be so good at taking it easy, and relaxing.
C: China, its diet, and its intense, drawn-out mating rituals. Also, the connotations of having a black eye in my species.

Would you tell anyone you had a talking panda or would you keep it secret?
R: I would tell my closest friends, but anymore than that would ruin it.
C: I’d ask the panda what he or she wanted.

Who was your harshest critic when you were first getting into music?
C: My sisters, the only criticism I find worth listening to.
R: Friends. They still are. Some of them are like ‘You still working on this and this record? You’ve been working on it for months now!’

Why did you decide to stick with it?
C: Music for me has been a free party mixed with a priceless education.
R: It’s the only thing that gives me that ants titties feeling.

Ants have titties now? Huh? What’s better, chips or crackers?
R: Uh, chips!! Any sort.
C: In an apocalypse, crackers. Can double in both roles and even act as bread in emergencies.