Caught in the Carousel

Prkr

By Alex Green

PRKR

"I'm in love with the modern world," sang Jonathan Richman on the Modern Lovers' "Roadrunner." What's not to love? In the last two decades, technology has helped people build immense social communities and fall in love at warp speed. But every tall achievement has an even taller shadow and the dark side of techno-romances hasn't been widely reported. In other words, in the physical world, most of your MySpace friends wouldn't know you if you walked right by them and your on-line E-Mance might have been impossible to exact in a noisy bar. And, brave as we are on-line, waving our CVs and speaking in bold absolutes about our likes and dislikes, something is decidedly missing. Like the way she moves her hair out of her eyes in the wind. Like the way it feels to walk with her through the blinking city. Like the blinking city itself, with its towering, downtown immensity and its rainy reminder that we're not here for very long.

Recorded in 28 days under the auspices of the RPM Challenge, Prkr's (The Maldives, Sun Vow) third solo album is all about the balance between technology and the organic world. In fact, The Felt City's punful title suggests a world that is both artificial and tactile and this juxtaposition of the adulterine with the sensual is really the dilemma that's at the core of the album. A one-man band from Seattle, Prkr is an innovative arranger and singer and his work here is as optimistic as it is nervous about the future. "G.P.S. Kids" suggests that in spite of being technologically linked, we're all lost together; the acoustic "Intelligentsia" twitches with winning syncopation and "In The Air I Am Okay" is a thoughtful rumination about how we observe the world. Filled with inventive soundscapes, aggressive techno excursions and deliciously doleful shoegazer vocals, The Felt City is a moving and wistful journey. Elsewhere, "Digital Vestiges" benefits from an elegant underwater wobble; "Let's Make Out" is a harmony of machines and "Global Din" has a fuzzy breakdown that fades to a stunning sonic fog. Paranoid, alert and heartfelt, The Felt City is an album of synth-pop fight songs for the broken, the lost and the lonely; those who can't help searching for anything that looks like it could be real.

Allow CITC to introduce you to Seattle's Sultan of Synth:

FULL NAME: Parker Benjamin Hill

NICKNAME: Prkr or Arcologies, but those are just for my music projects. Having an uncommon first name has kept things uncomplicated.

BAND MEMBERS: Just me so far.

HOMETOWN: Seattle, Washington

WEBSITE: www.prkrmusic.com / www.arcologies.net

RECORD LABEL: Unsigned

DESCRIBE YOUR SOUND IN ONE SENTENCE: Dense and spacey, synthetic and organic, literal and figurative, familiar and alien, urban and pastoral hybrid pop; or... sunbreaks in a rainstorm illuminating a downtown skyline.

PROUDEST PROFESSIONAL MOMENT: Not too many of these yet in my budding career, but... it would have to be hearing myself on KEXP for the first time while sitting in a coffee shop. It was like that scene in That Thing You Do where the band members run around screaming and hugging each other except I just sat there and smiled and drank my tea.

STRANGEST PROFESSIONAL MOMENT: Being offered a music video for "G.P.S. Kids" by a fan in Stockholm, Sweden. That I have fans in Scandinavia is strange and great. The world today is a global village indeed. I'm still waiting for the video.

THE SONG YOU WISH THAT YOU'D WRITTEN: "Let Down" by Radiohead.
Beautiful, lush, sad, epic, written by somebody else.

THE SONG YOU'RE PROUD AS HELL THAT YOU DID WRITE: "The Golden Circle" on The Felt City. Written in just one day but I was on my game.

FIVE BEST BANDS TO EVER ROAM THE EARTH: The Beach Boys, Boards of
Canada, Radiohead, Brian Eno, My Bloody Valentine

LIFE CHANGING MOMENT: This is recent but the house I grew up in was sold last July and the new owners have ripped it all apart: some wonderful trees were cut down and the house and yard have been facelifted. What's always been a sort of sanctuary, and the one place in the whole world I could call home, no longer exists. This has been life-changing in that it forced me to come to terms with time's relentless movement forward and the eventual unraveling of everything. In short, nothing can last forever (even if it always seemed so) and, with this realization, each moment is ever sweeter.

BEST ALBUM TO PLAY AFTER A BREAK-UP AND YOU'RE HOLDING A BOTTLE OF VODKA AND SOMETHING SHARP: The Beach Boys' Pet Sounds. Brian Wilson, as therapist, reminds you your relationship problems are shared more or less universally and creates a sunshine utopia to escape into, leaving everything behind for a little while.

INDULGENCE I REFUSE TO GIVE UP: Expensive cognac.

PERSONAL PHILOSOPHY: Our planet is a tiny speck in a vast universe and for the time being is everything we have as humans. As individuals we each process our world in our own unique way and this leads each person to a different perspective of reality. However, our perspectives are not entirely alien from each other since we all process pieces of the same world in our lives and the overlapping that occurs is what gives rise to culture and communication. Art is a form of communication that allows each person's unique perspective to be expressed in some form. Because of the differences in perspective, the interpretation of art is usually a complex process and what is considered good art will always be open to debate. For this reason, no artist should take any criticism too personally as long as they have worked hard and honestly in creating art from their own point of view.

Prkr's The Felt City is out now.