Parade - Lightning Hit The Trees - 1LP

Lightning Hit the Trees offers pigeonhole-swerving. music that veers from lulling and acoustic to nightmarish and noise-laden, from free jazzy improv to soundtrack atmospherics to prog-flecked post-rock, every one of its 29 minutes packed with ideas. How it might cohere live is an interesting point – it could easily just devolve into a mess – but there’s something hugely appealing about Parade’s disinclination to stay still, or provide an easy point of comparison.

Alexis Petridis - The Guardian - LINK

In perhaps the best debut track drop we’ve heard this year, Parade are a new London collective who create a sound that vibrates with an energy and invention that could only come from influences as diverse as Wim Wenders, The Radio Dept., Scott Walker, John Cassavetes, Judy Garland, Arca, Bette Davis and Sun Ra.

The Line of Best Fit - LINK

PARADE is an 8-piece group, predominantly from Brighton and now based in London. Its members - who are all involved in their own capacities in music, art, fashion, design and more - have been making music since they met at college in Brighton, flipping records and making beats in founding member Jago’s attic room. Since then the sound has evolved to incorporate live instrumentation alongside electronic elements. Though always collaborating in each other’s orbits, PARADE was fully formed when all members gravitated towards South-East London, scattering around in musically less mythologised areas across Nunhead, Forest Hill, Camberwell and Norwood.

Lightning Hit The Trees is the band's debut mixtape, and was entirely written, produced, engineered, and mixed in just two weeks. It was recorded in a shipping container in Forest Hill on basic, often broken, equipment with ideas often formed in the moment. As demonstrated by these two first singles, the mixtape pulls together a body of music that incorporates a wide range of ideas from a group of inventive, inspired new artists and comes together in a remarkably clear and unified vision. The mixtape is guided by uncanny valleys, cinematic tones, “hyper-real” mixing techniques, and by a light with no shadow. Influences include: Wim Wenders, Juergen Teller, Velvet Underground, Radio Dept., Scott Walker, Magliano, Soft Machine, This Heat, Pixies, John Cassavetes, Domenico Gnoli, Dadaists, Judy Garland, Cindy Lee, Arca, Bette Davis, Sun Ra.

a1. Intro

a2. Shaking Hands

a3. Sweet Thing

a4. Reach

a5. Pillow Talk

b1. Picking Flowers

b2. On the 22

b3. Srar3

b4. Que?

b5. It Moves