A short talk with Park Zero on "dangerous" forms of art, unpredictability, and narrative in experimental music.
Diogo: "This is not an aesthetic thing" (Park Zero): Your music comes with a warning. Do you think Park Zero's sonority really has the ability to trigger some parts of the brain and maximize a negative state of mind? Where does this "ability" come from, in your opinion?
Park Zero: I think the really negative and nasty parts of my music come from sample choices, specifically on the album PARK ZERO, where that warning is. It's there because of these really upsetting and negative sounds on the album (there are samples of a woman screaming, there are samples of the rape scene from A Clockwork Orange, there are samples from "Frankie Teardrop" by Suicide), which I regret using now because I think there are better ways of expressing that stuff. I just know a lot of that could be really triggering to some people, even distorted and without context, so I felt it was crucial to put a fair warning. I don't know if it's really an artistic choice, it just felt morally important to let people know upfront "hey, this might not be super great for you". A lot of artists don't care about that kind of stuff, but I think it's important.
Diogo: To indirectly cause "dangerous" results in a community or individual, the Object (in this case, "music") needs an "intermediary": a Being capable of feeling, thinking, and acting. In my opinion, it doesn't feel right to blame the "product" itself for "drastic consequences".
Park Zero: I agree! I don't blame the music, that'd be silly. I blame those artists. And once again, I love people who make weird upsetting shit. But a lot of people do not love that. A lot of people will get really upset about that. And I think it's our responsibility, as artists, to look out for those people. Keep making the stuff we love, but maybe put up a couple of signs like "hey, if this isn't for you, maybe look elsewhere." This is why I tend to do that whenever I veer into that kind of territory. There are plenty of people who are really into experimental music, but don't have the stomach to look for that music because the titles, artwork, and lyrics are all horribly triggering to them. There's a space for those people, for sure I think. I'm one of those people, and that's why I mostly avoid that stuff in my work.
Diogo: Park Zero's sonority reminds me of Pharmakon's brutal elements merged with a strange rhythmic component - almost "robotic" in its own fragmentation. How would you describe your art?
Park Zero: There's actually a joke genre I tend to use on all my Bandcamp releases called "HyperDeconstructionism". That's how I'd describe it. Most of my albums sound nothing alike, some albums even have entire songs that sound completely different, but they're held together by being absolutely demolished sonically. I don't ever want my music to really fit in one box, if I ever make an album that people expect to sound one way (or that I can describe in just one way), I think I've failed as an artist.
Diogo: Is there a "narrative" that you try to build around Power Noise? What is this "upsetting and strange territory" (Park Zero) that your music delves into?
Park Zero: Most definitely! All my albums are super conceptual to me. I think all experimental art is. When you give up on these ideas of traditional song structures, and chord progressions, everything that holds the music together: you have to find a different guiding principle. For me, that's narrative. It doesn't tend to be anything that you can really pick up on, it tends to just be my head viewing different songs as different pieces of a story, or a puzzle, and working out what the next logical step is. The strange and upsetting territory that I dive into can be a variety of things. Most of the time it's this ugly, ugly view of a postbellum world. Most recently I've turned away from that, trying to avoid getting too heavy ('cause making music like that can really fuck with your head a lot of the time). But if you look at my whole discography, it's a pretty common theme that's hard to miss. References to things like Slaughterhouse V on The Ides of a Sickening Youth make that super obvious.
Diogo: A "postbellum world" where moral values have been corrupted and despair reigns in every corner. A very "Beat generation" view on things. The human spirit hasn't really changed that much... has it?
Park Zero: I don't know if the human spirit ever really changes, not that much anyway. We adapt, we move, the world changes around us. But I feel like people are always people. Even if you go back thousands of years, you'll find people like us. The world just reveals different versions of people though. That's why I hate the question of "Nurture, or nature?", since it's both. People's nature is defined, and then the way they've nurtured changes how that comes out. People have hated wars long, long before I was ever born, and long before war was probably even a defined concept. No change in that. The fact that hatred is being displayed through distorted and stretched sounds is newer though. You play my stuff to the beat generation of the '50s, and they would probably not be quite as receptive.
Diogo: Which Park Zero's album do you have the strongest connection with? Would you be kind enough to elaborate on the reasons why?
Park Zero: The one I connect with the most is probably The Ides of a Sickening Youth. I still listen to that album and I'm shocked I managed to create it. It was (and still is) the most attention any album of mine has gotten, and I just remember this feeling after finishing it and listening to the final version of "wow, this sounds like an album." That was a big moment for me, having created something that I truly loved and sounded like how I wanted my music to sound. If I could go back, there's definitely stuff I'd change, but mostly: I'm very happy with that album, flaws and all: I love it.
Diogo: In Park Zero, you enumerate references that you recycle, including "lesbian webcomics", "John Cooper Clarke", and "the last words of Spike Milligan". This is a curious perspective on "outcast pop culture". Was there some kind of "line of thought" present while you were selecting your references?
Park Zero: There was definitely a method to the madness with my sample choices on that album, I was trying to select as many various choices as possible because I was trying to evoke this feeling of complete desensitization. There's no way to avoid upsetting things now. I think just by choosing the wildest shit, that I like, from the Internet and including it in that record, while pairing it with some of the most abrasive sounds I'd done thus far, it felt like a perfect way to evoke the kind of numbness that comes with living your life on the Internet, and seeing tons of stuff that maybe you really do not want to see [...].
Diogo: Would you consider your work to be an experiment on concepts such as Bertolt Brecht's Alienation theory and "desensitization" caused by "strangeness" and information overload?
Park Zero: I'd say so. I'd say my goal isn't really trying to immerse you into a soundscape or convince you that my music is more than it is, it's music. There's been a lot of points in time where I've shown people songs I'm working on, or asked for help with demos, and people have told me to do things that I think kill some of the great effectiveness that my music has. For example, on my latest album Proxy, the final song, "Funeral Song", is about 10 minutes of these distorted and stretched vocal samples, and it's a beautiful song. Every single person I've shown it to, before release, has told me to put reverb on it. Or to let them remix it. That would probably make it a more immersive experience, more traditional. More ambient. But I think there's something even better in just how raw it is, how unafraid it is, how in your face and unabashed it is. It refuses to dilute itself, and I love that.
Park Zero: You can expect a lot! It's my proudest work yet, most people think it's my best. It's probably less noisy than anything else I've done, but that sacrifice allowed for a wider range of sonic exploration and songwriting. Don't worry though, it'll still give you tinnitus, you just might not have to turn down your speakers as much with this one. And hey, some of it might even be catchy for once.
Proxy | Park Zero
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