Parrallels by Tony Kapel & Maitejosune Urrechaga
“We find an opportunity to tour, so we do” is how Holly Dodsen of Canadian synth-pop trio Parallels says they approached this summers tour. Which brought them to Downtown Miamis Grand Centrals His and Her Saturday night. Tuffgnarl was able to get a few minutes out of them after sound check.
Going through a line-up change in Oct of 2012, brother Nick Dodsen took control of the drums and Artem Galpherine took his position at the keys.
Parallels self-released XII came out summer of 2012
“We released our latest album last June, put it our ourselves, and self promoting it, so it kinda takes a while for it to take off when you do it on a small scale – so when we have the opportunity to tour, we take them.”
Are all three of you on XII?
Holly takes this one. “No its mainly me I did all the programming and composing, Nick helped produce – Artem was always there saying this is good, this isn’t.
I look over to Artem.
“How did you get into the mix?”
“Well i’ve known Nick since High-School and basically have been living in their studio.” Holly jumps in “he spends more time in there then we do. So since the 2012 change up, I asked if he wanted to play, and so yeah.”
What were your first concerts?
Holly sits in her seat, legs crossed both hands at the ends of her knees and she sorta teeters in back and forth. “My first concert was my dads concert, he’s in a band called the Stampeders, they reunited in 92 and Nick was super young, I was six, I had chicken pox during the concert, then my first non-family concert was Neil Diamond.”
Artem jumps in
“Im gonna come from the polar opposite I saw Slip-Knot. When I was 14 with Ozzy” Nick jumps in “Artem and I are recovering metal fans.” Artem agrees., and Nick follows with. “I saw Rolling Stones first, but was truly blown away when I saw AC/DC, I’m a huge AC/DC fan.”
Holly Dodson
The Stampeders are a Canadian trio which lead by their father Rich Dodsen, disbanded in 77 and reunited in 92. They were huge throughout the 70s, writing songs such as ‘Sweet City Woman’ released in 72, which held the number one spot in Canada for four weeks. It reached number 8 on the US billboards top 100 chart. They had 25 of their songs hold positions on top 100 charts, so the Dodsen pedigree stands strong, and Parallels performance proves it.
Back to it
What other instruments do you play?
Nick started this one “I only started playing drums 5 years ago, although it is funny that we have a picture of me at a drumset banging on the kit. But I would have to say that piano is my first.” Holly answers along with him on this “I would have to say Piano as well.” Its Artems turn “I was born in Moscow and my mother at the age of five sent me to a violin conservatory then we came to Canada and It was hard to find a violin teacher so did that for about five to six years and the best violin teacher we did find got a job a table factory and lost that good gentleman and I was 13 by that time and I wanted to be rock star. So I picked up guitar and learned guitar then got bore of guitar so took up piano got bored of the classical practice and wanted to become a rock star again. So I went in cycles an then came Slip-knot so.” Holly jumps in with a giggling “And now he plays synthpop go figure”
Outside of music do you all have any other mediums you delve in?
Holly : yeah definitely I like writing, poetry type I guess, its what becomes our lyrics
Artem : I dabble in a few visual mediums I just set my head right and attack the canvas, and whatever comes
Artem and Nick met in art school, it was a mutual hatred that brought them together. Obviously an art driven bunch, they give stories of how Toranto is almost over stimulating, multicultural, leading to none stop weekends. They told stories of gypsy men, in whole the in the wall bar that’ll make anyone dance.
How did you line up with Shawn Christensen
for multi award winning film ‘Curfew’?
Holly : well that was neat they sorta reached out to us about using one of songs for their film. they really played it down like they’re just gonna try and get into Tribeca a few film festivals. Turned out it won an Oscar for it. I cried when they won. We liked the whole idea of it , being an indie film and all, they actually raised money through Kick-starter and Indie go-go. So now we say we’ve won an Oscar by proxy.
curfewfilm.com
have you guys thought about scoring a film?
We haven’t thought or talked about it but we surely would – if you know of any filmmakers looking for a score send them our way.
Is there anything we should look for from Parallels?
Holly : Yes – we have a ton of new material we will be, adding more guitar drive to tracks with Artem, he will be playing live with us as well, so we have a lot going on. We’re always recording. So yeah you can expect something this winter.
http://www.parallels.fm/
***originally released on tuffgnarl