INTRODUCING: Parlour Magic

Drifting somewhere between broadcast static and late-night neon, Parlour Magic has always thrived in liminal space. Now, with The Embassy, project leader Luc Bokor-Smith pushes that world further than ever — trading solitary synth-pop introspection for a richer, band-driven sound that feels both intimate and cinematic. Recorded between New York and Berlin, the album plays like a passport through missed connections, half-heard signals, and quiet hope, channelling echoes of Depeche Mode, Neon Indian, and Arctic Monkeys — while remaining unmistakably its own. We caught up with Bokor-Smith to talk collaboration, evolution, and building an emotional outpost between past and future.

1. Parlour Magic has always lived in a carefully built sonic universe, but The Embassy feels more expansive and cinematic. What first sparked the idea of this “liminal world” as the album’s conceptual centre?

There are few things I love more in this world than a completely anonymous airport hotel. I’m being completely serious – the comfort an endless repeating hallway gives me is hard to put into words. Between touring and recording, I’ve spent a lot of time in these transient spaces over the past year and a half, and as I began the writing process for what would become “The Embassy,” the effect of that was clearly front-of-mind.

2. The lead single “Embassy” captures a feeling of communication suspended in transit—messages sent, but not yet received. Was that sense of uncertainty something you were consciously exploring while writing, or did it reveal itself over time?

As I began to consider what a third Parlour Magic album might look like, I did what any sensible person would do – I spent time in various Tier 2 Chinese cities in the dead of winter. That trip afforded me the experience of understanding, as best a person can, what it really feels like to be an alien somewhere. It’s basically an entirely separate internet over there, so none of the communication apps on your phone work. Those three weeks set the tone of the record insofar as the themes of fractured communication and missed calls are concerned.

3. This record leans more heavily into a full band dynamic while still retaining your meticulous, analog-driven production style. How did your recent live evolution influence the way these songs were written and recorded?

Getting to watch the “Saturn Return” songs grow up over the last year and a half on the road was incredibly eye-opening to me. For a record that was largely made from layers of different synthesizers, I couldn’t believe how well the songs translated to a full band context. As the tour progressed, I think the songs moved towards a more rock-driven sound than the smoother album versions. When I started the process of writing this record, I knew from the jump that I wanted to capture the feeling of people in a room playing music together.

4. You’ve cited visual references ranging from mirrored interiors to Wong Kar-wai and Wim Wenders. How do those cinematic influences shape your songwriting process—do images come before sound, or vice versa?

This goes back to the airport hotel thing a bit – the interiors in the films of Wenders and Wong Kar-Wai evoke the same sense of wonder in me; it’s the nostalgia for something that never happened, and the promise of what might be. I find that I take inspiration from visual input, but the way that input translates into music isn’t necessarily a straight line. In fact, often I’ll realize after the fact that a song I wrote was subconsciously influenced by something I’d seen or somewhere I’d been. It might seem clear as day in the rearview, but in the moment I sometimes seem to miss it.

5. With The Embassy positioned between past and future, nostalgia and forward motion, what do you hope listeners feel as they move through the album from start to finish?

Sometimes memory is all that feels like home.