Brooklyn noise-punks Parts & Labor return with ‘Haunted Limbs’ + a double-drummer double album

Brooklyn’s beloved noise-punk institution Parts & Labor are back from the dead — and they brought two drummers.

It’s been 15 years since Parts & Labor put out a record. Fifteen years since the Brooklyn underground’s most exhilarating noise-pop architects played their final (or so we thought) shows at 285 Kent in February 2012, sending the crowd into such a frenzy that the audience literally tore the stage apart. And now, just like that, they’re back — louder, more chaotic, and somehow more anthemic than ever.

The band has just released their new single Haunted Limbs, the latest taste of their forthcoming double album ‘Set of All Sets’, due out July 10 on Ernest Jenning Record Co. It’s their first new LP since 2011’s ‘Constant Future,’ and by the sounds of it, the hiatus only made the hunger worse.

Two Drummers. 79 Minutes. One Hell of a Comeback.

Co-founders Dan Friel and BJ Warshaw are rejoined by drummers Christopher Weingarten and Joe Wong — both veterans of the band’s critically acclaimed Jagjaguwar era — now locked in together as a fully synchronized four-piece. The result is a colossal double album clocking in at 79 minutes of what the band calls “apocalypse-pop”: skyscraping melodies, squelching electronics, and rhythms inspired by Tanzanian singeli, ecstatic free improv, and the motorik pulse of vintage krautrock. It’s a lot — in the best possible way.

On the new single, Friel explains it pretty perfectly: “‘Haunted Limbs’ blurs the line between the challenges of building a better world and some straightforward shit about restarting a band after 15 years. The lyric ‘It haunts us like a limb we haven’t grown yet’ pretty much sums it all up.”

What They’ve Been Up To

In the time between then and now, the Parts & Labor universe stayed busy. Friel released eight albums — including four solo records and four with his power trio Upper Wilds on Thrill Jockey. Wong became a sought-after film and TV composer, scoring Emmy-winning shows like Russian Doll and Master of None. Warshaw co-runs LEVEL, a multidisciplinary artist retreat in Chapel Hill, NC. Weingarten has kept a sharp career in music writing and recently launched the all-star ambient noise app Fuzzzel. The band scattered, evolved, kept creating — and then the world got bad enough that regrouping felt not just inevitable, but necessary.

“It felt like all the things we were worried about back in the day — techno-fascism, authoritarianism, rapacious capitalism, societal division — were coming true if not getting worse,” says Warshaw. “Reuniting has been a lifeline. The doing is the antidote.”

Tour Dates

Parts & Labor will be hitting the road with an expanded six-piece lineup this summer. Tickets on sale now.

July 24 — Los Angeles, CA @ Zebulon w/ PG14 & HLLLYH (ex-Mae Shi)
July 26 — San Francisco, CA @ Bottom Of The Hill w/ Evicshen & HLLLYH (ex-Mae Shi)
August 7 — Ridgewood, NY @ TV Eye w/ Oneida & Kinski
August 8 — Ridgewood, NY @ TV Eye w/ 75 Dollar Bill & Parlor Walls

‘Set of All Sets’ track list

1. Endless Cycle Pt. 1: Repetition Nil
2. Endless Cycle Pt. 2: Edges of Forgetting
3. Many Worlds
4. Descending
5. Haunted Limbs
6. Seamripper
7. Arterial Material
8. Anti-Lions and Lemonade
9. Descending
10. Endless Cycle Pt. 3: Better Run
11. Endless Cycle Pt. 4: Working in Storm
12. Indecision Tree
13. Descending
14. Parallel Tracks
15. Off By One
16. Like They’re Here to Stay
17. Set of All Sets

‘Set of All Sets’ is out July 10 on Ernest Jenning Record Co. Pre-order here.