“Start out strong, and keep increasing” : The Line of Best Fit meets Karin Park

Quite often when speaking to artists about their journey through music, the subject in question will have a few tales to tell about previous projects. Be that as a member of an embarrassing ska-punk band while in Sixth Form, or an acoustic performance of a heart wrenching indie song designed to win the heart of the guy or girl they’d set there sights on, more often than not, musicians will have been involved in other projects before their current one. It’s not that often however, that the artist in question started out as a bona fide pop star in her native region, with MTV awards to prove it. But that’s exactly the case with Karin Park, better known nowadays for her dark and brooding synth led compositions than her pop tinged beginnings.

As we catch up with Karin Park, she’s in Paris in the midst of a tour with SBTRKT. “We also just played with Azari & III… in Brussels. Both acts are really good so I’m really happy to be on tour with them.”

“The response has been overwhelming. I actually think the gig with Azari & III the other day at Botanique was one of the highlights so far. I just wasn’t expecting the reaction we got but 650 people started dancing and screaming right away and completely stayed with us through the whole set. It was great.”

Karin Park has spent the last year on the road, writing, recording and is now preparing to unleash the fruits of her labour in the shape of her fourth album Highwire Poetry, an invigorating mix of industrial pop, electronic inventions and heart-wrenching observations.

2004 saw Park release her first album, a hugely successful record entitled Superworldunknown which propelled her into the Norwegian spotlight. The music is worlds apart from that which Park associates herself with today, so how does she feel about her first album now? ”For me, there are a lot of emotions tied up in my first album, even though I feel like a completely different person now. It was kind of a musical childhood with both good and bad memories. I’ve felt overwhelming happiness and I’ve cried my heart out in hotel rooms, made confused statements and been totally depressed. It’s been an interesting journey!”

“I try to avoid hypothetical questions, as they leave my brain boiling. I’m sure I would have changed something but it doesn’t feel like it matters. I know I’ve learned a lot but I don’t really regret anything.”

Originally from Sweden, it was in Norway where Park first made her mark having left the small community of Djura, Sweden for the bright lights of Oslo, stopping off in Japan along the way. “I grew up in church where my parents made me sing every Sunday from an age of 5 and we moved to Japan when I was 7. We lived in the countryside in Japan too so there weren’t really many influences outside of our church before I got my first Whitney Houston cassette at the age of 10 and my brother discovered Metallica. My first serious love was Depeche Mode. We listened to Kraftwerk, Front 242 and things like that but my love for that came later when I discovered analogue synths properly.”

Living in such a tight knit community meant that Park was quick to turn to music for entertainment, “I was 6 years old when I made a lullaby for my younger sister and brother which they made me sing for them every night,” says Park. “I played the piano from 10, but didn’t really compose much before I was 16. Then I started to record my own stuff.” Park continues to make music with brother David today, him being her sole band member taking on the responsibility of a variety of instruments, mainly drums and bass, as well inventions that we’re not so familiar with. “Well, you see the equipment we want to use for our live shows doesn’t really exist yet,” explains Park, “so we have to build some of it ourselves.”

” were kind of bitter enemies until the age of 20. We didn’t really know each other that well until I phoned him up in 2004 and said I needed a really good drummer. He started on drums, then he played guitar for a while, then he went to bass but now he is back on the drums and bass at the same time. He is the master of multitasking. We write some of the music together as well. He’s the best partner and we hardly ever fight anymore… David is the instrument genius. He is so creative when it comes to finding ways to play our quite special live set. He plays the drums and the bass at the same time and we have created a set up where we can experiment and be impulsive on stage.”

Highwire Poetry is Parks’ fourth album, an album more intense, more stylised and more experimental than anything she’s released up until this point. ”I wanted to go deeper in to this electronic journey that I had started on Ashes to Gold. One day I got a song from Barry Barnett in the UK that he wanted me to write on. He didn’t know me. He had just heard my music from Myspace and his label contacted me.”

“So I wrote a song, they loved it and State of the Eye recordings flew over to Norway to see me. I really liked them and they ended up signing me for a whole album based on one song. That song is called ‘Thousand Loaded Guns’ and is now on the album.”

Park then went on to work with producer Christoffer Berg, who having already produced the likes of Fever Ray/The Knife and Little Dragon proved to be a perfect match to Park’s style and approach. It hasn’t been a completely seamless process however, as using a writing approach that Park was unfamiliar with proved to set the journey of making this album off to a very bad start indeed. ”I actually had my first proper ‘writing session’ with some professional hit makers this time,” she says. “I thought it would be fun to try it. Me and these guys had a 3 day session. I CRIED the second day when I walked to the studio. I felt emotionally raped and just hated every second of it.”

“I take music very seriously. Maybe too seriously sometimes. But songwriting is an emotional process for me and not just something that you put together carelessly. So that didn’t work out. But then I hung out in the studio with Barry, Johnny McDaid and my brother David who’s got the same approach as me and loves music in the same way I do.”

The first single to be taken from Highwire Poetry is ’Fryngies’, a driving piece featuring hypnotic, dark electronic tones and nuances (“I love bass and beats so I’ve been focusing a lot on that”) with Park’s mesmerising, striking vocal providing the focal point. “Well, it’s kind of about looking forward,” says Park of the single, “pushing ahead and don’t let the monsters in your life get to you even though they are everywhere. You know the times when you feel that everything is just coming at you. It’s too much to take and you’re nearly drowning.”

An exceptional performer, an extraordinary writer and someone with an inspired approach to creating honest, progressive and exciting electronic music, Park is a very interesting prospect for 2012 indeed. ”Start out strong, and keep increasing.” says Park of her work ethic. “My dad told me this and it’s a motto from a Swedish cross country skier called Sixten Järnberg.” Strong in music, strong in mind, strong in attitude, this is certainly not the last we’ll be hearing of Karin Park.

Karin Park will release ‘Fryngies’ on the 5 March 2012, with Highwire Poetry due for release this Spring. Karin will be playing White Heat at Madame Jojo’s on the 6 March to mark the release.