Parkbench only really crystallized lately; in the last five or six years. But I have made songs with people and performed since I was in kindergarten. My first home recording was a rap cassette in Danish I recorded when I was 10 or 11 called 'Kindergarten Rap' (still have it) with a cameo by two buddies, mainly for fun. When I was 15 I went into Stig Kreutzfelt's studio and cut a 3-track rap demo called 'My Ego Iz In Point Blank Range'. I left music for painting and drama for a while, and was only really serious about it again once I went through high school and college and had access to lots of collaborators and co-conspirators. At Nottingham, and much earlier when I lived in Spain, I had started up various bands with names like 'Cryptic Purpose', 'Arcane' 'Knife Called Famine,' 'Four Horsemen of The Apocalypse' and 'Chill Factor X (CFX)'. I still liked mixing music and friendships, meaning that there were also many cases of aesthetic and spiritual division - especially as I went darker and more 'goth' - and so scores of members came and went. Currently, however, I have learnt to become more and more self-sufficient. Having gone through at least 30 or 40 members, I now try to work the music around the practical obstructions and dividing personalities in bands. Consequently Parkbench recordings and performances are a gently woven collaboration between lots of different people at various times and musical callings and levels - acquaintances, friends, family members (where sometimes the difference is subtle): John King (www.myspace.com/lofiman) The Chinamen (www.myspace.com/thechinamenmusic) Tom Rodwell (www.tomrodwell.com) Franck Alba (www.myspace.com/franckjeanalba) Jim Kimberley (www.myspace.com/bruiseuk), Dave Sugarbeet, and many other blue-toed, battling & blossoming young musos (and old!). My other band members include those that help me behind the scenes - my publisher Annie Reed from Air to Air (EMI Records), Jane Glitre, Director of Spitz Records, and Tony from EGEA Alternative Music Distribution. Without them I wouldn't quite know what the heck to do apart from just keep recording and performing! So; I say "bless....: )"
Influences
............What You Get Is What You See... Blues, Dub, New School Hip-Hop (my first record was "It Takes A Nation of Millions..." - which I bought at “Funk You” Records, back in Copenhagen when I was 12) Flamenco / Flamenco-Hip-Hop, Tex-Mex sounds from Ennio to Calexico, twangy Surf and Instrumentals (I moved to Spain at 13) Ethnic Fusion, High-Life (and spent some of my childhood in Nigeria) Afro-Beat, Gnawa, Alt-Folk/Country, Russian Vespers, Bill Bryson (then I was a late teenager in Minnesota - but who doesn't love to laugh out loud and learn something fancy simultaneously?) Goth, Punkabilly, Darkwave, Dub Step (and finally a bemused promoter in East-London, with your typical crash-pad sofa-share off Dalston Market - but the garden was next to the eternally and hilariously PUMPIN' Ridley Road Jamaican & Nigerian music stalls - Reggae, Christian Country, Gospel, Ragga!!!) but my new loves were Punk-Jazz, Electro, Dancehall, Post-Jazz, Post-Rock, Ska-Hop...and (if edgy) Soul, Funk and R&B (quite a rarity but pretty special when it happens) and also, once I moved from playing in full bands myself to doing solo gigs, I WORSHIPPED ALL One-Man-Bands - even booked a festival of those genius soundniks once, the rule of which was that everyone had to play at least 2 instruments and sing at the same time. It climaxed with a One-Man-Band-DUO!!! (called Deltahead - they still tour in an old Swedish ambulance: "Automatic Drive, For The People") - 1920s Swing, and certain forms of Doom / Nu Metal (oh yes - I studied in Oslo once upon a home-sick time - brushing up on my Viking credentials and listening to Emperor and Mayhem)... As to people? Sound Carriers? A musician is the true meaning of a "conductor"- not in the directorial sense, but as in making ways of trapping and transforming HUMAN ELECTRICITY into demonstrative patterns for yourself and everyone to feel the natural and awesome beauty - the raw material of which is otherwise known as EMOTION...(If you like robots, there might be something wrong with you - I never got the musical link: "The machine teaches the human to produce more machines" - still scribbled in the men's at The Ten Bells in Spitalfields - the pub opposite the Spitz, where so many things came and went; music and friendships, and good stockists and bad, where even the safe was not safe and a broken toilet mirror could hang, like a dusty stag’s head, for long enough to become a comforting feature, a delight even (see, things like that takes years, years of a certain kind too) but yeah, so, why screw robots when you can have humans instead? And speaking of humans, well, gotta mention them too; not heroes or icons but CULPRITS - guilty as charged of voodooing my whole life (off to 'Somewhere'), maybe if I finally understand it, leaving some things more solid than solid air, that not all things have to go up and evaporate, that music can keep a memory or a soul alive if you really want it - which is pure magic of course - so here's to the time conductors: Waits, 16 Horsepower, Martyn, Cave, Ultramagnetic, Poveda, Old Dirty, Robin (not the chick, the Flamenco guitarist) Dowd, Hooker, Wolf, Dalton, Songdog, Eric B, Williams, Laswell, Necks, Deadbeat, Capleton, posthuman, Nephillim, Hopkins, Cranes, everyone on 4AD in the 1980s, Southern & Bella Union Records (more recently) Babar Luck, Lucha Libre, Frisell, Beefheart, Lord Buckley, Modeselektor, Hardin, Holiday, Dhafer Youssef, Lhasa, Chuck D, the Bomb Squad and Flava (before he went off to make that fucked up TV show; possibly the only thing he could do that was WORSE than crack!), Busta Rhymes, 08001, Cake, El Ultimo de la Fila, Squirrel Nut Zippers, Old Time Relijun, Django Reinhardt, TOOB, William Burroughs (funny how its never "Bill") xploding plastix, Bregovic & Kusturica, Erkan Ugur (cos Turks are so stunningly SERIOUS), Thee Swank Bastards, Dead Plants, Marley, Need New Body, Waters, Hawkins, Chao, Los Banditos, Julien Jacob, Iron Horse........WARNING!!! WARNING!!! - This list is a neutron in an atom inside a molecule of a speck of snow upon the tip of an iceberg lodged across a sea in the canyon of a planet infinitely larger than Earth...or at least that's how I feel after all this time, always listening, in light or dark...When did you last go even for one single day without hearing music of some kind? Its been years probably, maybe a lifetime? That's the power we have inherited today - a force of nature, science and spirit all at once. Maybe THAT is God. Im not a believer but I'd believe in THAT. God with a small 'g' love & special FORCE..."Aint It Skunky????” Peace - m.
Sounds Like
"Heaven knows what pigeonhole to put this into - there is jazz here, and Blues, and country, and roots, and nothing that you can pin down to a genre or a style! But it is all good! The songs here all have an identity and a life to them, whether the bitter and western sounding 'Time Don't Fly', with the clarinet taking across to the east coast; or 'She Looks Like A Bus', which sounds like it should be the soundtrack to Tarantino's new movie, until you listen to the lyrics - "She looks like a bus/My honey looks like a bus" - but still, your ears are pinned by the saxophone and the acoustic guitar. 'Tomb Of The Unknown' is Americana with a twisted guitar and a melancholy ring to it. 'Cocain Caltrain Blues' is a wonderful, bucolic and gentle way to wend out of the album, with a clarinet wimbling its way through in the background until the sharp jagged guitar starts you into the wind up. The whole album takes you in direction after direction, and all of it seems to be within the capabilities of the band without overstretching their abilities. When I think back to the variety of bands I saw at the Spitz venue, this seems utterly appropriate for their label’s debut." - Andy Snipper (BLUES MAGAZINE, ISSUE 45, 118, 2008)
Record Label
Spitz Records / EMI Publishing / EGEA Distribution
"DON'T TRY" - CHARLES BUKOWSKI. PARKBENCH is Danish born, sometime London exile, Californian resident and ex-Spanish, Nigerian, Norweigan and Minnesotan local gipsy-boy songwriter DJ, promoter and real life poetical word scribbler, rolled into a lanky 32-year old immigrant spiritual anti-corps emigre, post-Viking, cerebrally coitus'd can-of-wordaged, manu-tau tempered, plain clothes drifting pale rider Copenhagen dago unnative rereformed hoodoo lighter thief honkey monk. In first-person (let's make this easy) - or at least as and when I'm manifesting the 'real' Parkbench (there are many pretenders out there) - I basically accompany myself on vocals, guitars, keys, bass, megaphone, sequencing, midi-arranging, kitchen sink or dinner-room percussion patterns, harmonic textures - and whatever else happens to be picked up, picked on, or picked apart in or around the various studios me and my motley friends like to frequent when we record or jam. This includes various stringed instruments; two Nord synths; generalised, drastic, sweeping statements about life and the world; perilously tuning and clattering about on my grandfather's white upright piano; shouting or whispering through my aforementioned Chinese [medium?]phone, and endlessly restringing and polishing my dad's '76 Tama (acoustic C&W guitar) - which I stole one day and never gave back; and of which, to his credit, he always saw as a kind of 'investment barter' i think, whose eventual return[s] he always stoically believed in; something I never quite fathomed. My latest instruments now include a fine Santa Cruz OM parlour guitar with magmic pick-ups (I recklessly spent $3000 on in a muso's wet dream known as Gryphon's Stringed instruments in Palo Alto, California); and a glossy black Godin LGXT electric guitar, which also has a set of SD double-humbucker pick-ups and, as a particularly disgusting but hilarious feature: a midi-output. I record and mix using Pro Tools and a set of Dynaudio Acoustics; both digital and analogue limiters and rack mounted compressors and other preamps (Focusrite, Manley, Demeter); I employ various stereo vocal and stereo guitar miking techniques and mic models; I always colour my midi with valve amplification or cheap tape or cell-phone sampled recordings; and I use an old vintage 1960s Otari reel-to-reel (2") tape machine for mix-downs, background texture and master compression. As far as publishing and distribution, I recently got signed to Spitz Records with a publishing deal from Air to Air via EMI Records and distribution through EGEA Alternative Music. Debut release: "Versus Blackout" (2008); upcoming release: "WanderWorld" (2009). Order it simply by dropping me an email (scarygotchaclub@gmail.com); or to Jane Glitre from Spitz Records (press@spitz.co.uk). Otherwise it is available in the usual places - HMV, Amazon.com, Itunes, etc; but then not as cheap. Live I often play with FRANCK ALBA (from erstwhile 4AD outfit Piano Magic); JIM KIMBERLEY (from Glastonbury / Scary Gotcha Club regulars Bruise) on drums and various backing vocals; and DAVID 'Starman' VILLANUEVA (from Santiago, Chile, and also from a spiritual place very near my own, I think) on everything from guitars, bass, percussion and harp. Our music is described as "darkly sophisticated slabs of lonesomeness" (Bella Todd - TIME OUT). Other press quotes: "Initial impression is a lofi acoustica take on Super Furry Animals: A very Gryff Rhys type vocal, so you can also mention Gorky’s for sure. Musically very low key and moody a la some of Nick Drake’s work, or Nick Cave for that matter. "Folkambient" they call it. Leonard Cohen rears his head on ‘Tomb of the Unknown’…via Lambchop…but this is very fine work…pedal steel, slide, haunting vocals..all good. - (BUGBEAR MUSIC). We recently got a '*' (star) recommendation in Time Out magazine (London) - for which I was very encouraged - so perhaps the park is blossoming little by little....
Hellooooo! Wish we were over there in the California sun hanging out too. Miss it and my regular taco fix! Things coming along with the tunes - recording everything from bleeps, to barking to cutlery... something winging its way back to you very soon! Hope times are rosy. much love xx
Thanks for the message, Geezer. Yes, let's talk soon. Very much looking forward to my next fix of Parky. Roll on September. Big lumps of love to you, my friend. XXX
hey bro. i heard some bad things went down. from a frend in the u.k. i realise from experience this can be traumatic.in the end you are good guy and vampires come to you.dont let oppresion and bad deeds loose that great soul you have. also remember i love you always. no matter what. stay who you are. keep doing the music. thanks for THE INSPIRATION. babar luck
salaam bro. may Allah look after your beautiful strange music. thanks for the messages and the love and the work. stay brite in the dark. frankenstaanee the muslim musical monster created in the west who loves al the peoples all the time. " you damn fool man but you real man" B.L.K.J babar luck
Hi Martin, it was nice playing with you the last time..! I just watched your video in Dalston - nice one, really sets the scene reminded me of an Urbanised Western. Hope you are good. x
Hi Martin. Got the email that you are back in town later this month. If i was in England, I'd be there, but I'm fleeing to Scotland next Sat for sometime. Enjoyed seeing you last time. Be well. Bruce.
............What You Get Is What You See... Blues, Dub, New School Hip-Hop (my first record was "It Takes A Nation of Millions..." - which I bought at “Funk You” Records, back in Copenhagen when I was 12) Flamenco / Flamenco-Hip-Hop, Tex-Mex sounds from Ennio to Calexico, twangy Surf and Instrumentals (I moved to Spain at 13) Ethnic Fusion, High-Life (and spent some of my childhood in Nigeria) Afro-Beat, Gnawa, Alt-Folk/Country, Russian Vespers, Bill Bryson (then I was a late teenager in Minnesota - but who doesn't love to laugh out loud and learn something fancy simultaneously?) Goth, Punkabilly, Darkwave, Dub Step (and finally a bemused promoter in East-London, with your typical crash-pad sofa-share off Dalston Market - but the garden was next to the eternally and hilariously PUMPIN' Ridley Road Jamaican & Nigerian music stalls - Reggae, Christian Country, Gospel, Ragga!!!) but my new loves were Punk-Jazz, Electro, Dancehall, Post-Jazz, Post-Rock, Ska-Hop...and (if edgy) Soul, Funk and R&B (quite a rarity but pretty special when it happens) and also, once I moved from playing in full bands myself to doing solo gigs, I WORSHIPPED ALL One-Man-Bands - even booked a festival of those genius soundniks once, the rule of which was that everyone had to play at least 2 instruments and sing at the same time. It climaxed with a One-Man-Band-DUO!!! (called Deltahead - they still tour in an old Swedish ambulance: "Automatic Drive, For The People") - 1920s Swing, and certain forms of Doom / Nu Metal (oh yes - I studied in Oslo once upon a home-sick time - brushing up on my Viking credentials and listening to Emperor and Mayhem)... As to people? Sound Carriers? A musician is the true meaning of a "conductor"- not in the directorial sense, but as in making ways of trapping and transforming HUMAN ELECTRICITY into demonstrative patterns for yourself and everyone to feel the natural and awesome beauty - the raw material of which is otherwise known as EMOTION...(If you like robots, there might be something wrong with you - I never got the musical link: "The machine teaches the human to produce more machines" - still scribbled in the men's at The Ten Bells in Spitalfields - the pub opposite the Spitz, where so many things came and went; music and friendships, and good stockists and bad, where even the safe was not safe and a broken toilet mirror could hang, like a dusty stag’s head, for long enough to become a comforting feature, a delight even (see, things like that takes years, years of a certain kind too) but yeah, so, why screw robots when you can have humans instead? And speaking of humans, well, gotta mention them too; not heroes or icons but CULPRITS - guilty as charged of voodooing my whole life (off to 'Somewhere'), maybe if I finally understand it, leaving some things more solid than solid air, that not all things have to go up and evaporate, that music can keep a memory or a soul alive if you really want it - which is pure magic of course - so here's to the time conductors: Waits, 16 Horsepower, Martyn, Cave, Ultramagnetic, Poveda, Old Dirty, Robin (not the chick, the Flamenco guitarist) Dowd, Hooker, Wolf, Dalton, Songdog, Eric B, Williams, Laswell, Necks, Deadbeat, Capleton, posthuman, Nephillim, Hopkins, Cranes, everyone on 4AD in the 1980s, Southern & Bella Union Records (more recently) Babar Luck, Lucha Libre, Frisell, Beefheart, Lord Buckley, Modeselektor, Hardin, Holiday, Dhafer Youssef, Lhasa, Chuck D, the Bomb Squad and Flava (before he went off to make that fucked up TV show; possibly the only thing he could do that was WORSE than crack!), Busta Rhymes, 08001, Cake, El Ultimo de la Fila, Squirrel Nut Zippers, Old Time Relijun, Django Reinhardt, TOOB, William Burroughs (funny how its never "Bill") xploding plastix, Bregovic & Kusturica, Erkan Ugur (cos Turks are so stunningly SERIOUS), Thee Swank Bastards, Dead Plants, Marley, Need New Body, Waters, Hawkins, Chao, Los Banditos, Julien Jacob, Iron Horse........WARNING!!! WARNING!!! - This list is a neutron in an atom inside a molecule of a speck of snow upon the tip of an iceberg lodged across a sea in the canyon of a planet infinitely larger than Earth...or at least that's how I feel after all this time, always listening, in light or dark...When did you last go even for one single day without hearing music of some kind? Its been years probably, maybe a lifetime? That's the power we have inherited today - a force of nature, science and spirit all at once. Maybe THAT is God. Im not a believer but I'd believe in THAT. God with a small 'g' love & special FORCE..."Aint It Skunky????” Peace - m.
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