Music

 Ken Park on debut EP, treating NYC like a playground and Chaotic Energy

Story by Anagricel Duran

Every now and then, there is a band or two who really catch my eye – or ear rather. Recently, it’s been Ken Park – the apartment-born recording project of San Diego-native, New York–based artist Liam Creamer.

Named after the controversial 2002 film – a movie Creamer admits he watched when he was way to young, the self-titled debut EP was released a little over a month ago and left me completely in awe. From the folky lead single ‘Sleep Paralysis’ to the heavy and hard hitting record opener ‘Maybe Delete’, the six-track project has filled my shoegazy heart and has left me wanting more. 

Each song on the EP is different from the other, following no exact formula but having the throughline of Creamer’s vocals and fit together perfectly like a sonic puzzle. Ahead of his opening slot at Elsewhere in Queens, NY, and on the one month anniversary of the EP’s release, I met up with the musician himself. 

While sat outside of Pearl’s Social & Billy Club in Brooklyn on a crisp, gloomy day, Creamer opened up about the process of creating his first body of work as Ken Park, how he approaches songwriting and why he needs to treat the Big Apple like a playground. 

Anagricel Duran: Hi Liam. Talk to me about your self-titled EP. What was it about thef the six tracks that felt like it would be the perfect collection to introduce Ken Park? 

Liam Creamer: “They were the ones that stuck out of so many songs. They also all happened to be six years apart in writing, like each one had its year, and that’s why they all sound very different, because they were either recorded in very different bedrooms or I was listening to different things. It very much wasn’t ‘I’m gonna sit down and write this EP.’  It was essentially me learning what I want to make.”

AGD: So each song was written in a different year? Was it weird to step back and listen to those tracks when putting together the EP? Because if it’s a song a year, you’re growing and evolving, or taking three steps back…

LC: Steps back 100 per cent steps back because it did require me to step outside of where I was and think of it as an EP, instead of me growing up.

AGD: What was the hardest song for you to decide that it would be a good fit for the EP? 

LC: ‘Maybe Delete’, it’s the most different and one that is the hardest, heaviest, and that’s what I think I’m not really identifying with anymore.

AGD: In an interview with a magazine, you spoke about how you write songs using a “bumper sticker” method. Do you think this fragmented approach mirrors how you experience memory and emotion, or is it more of a deliberate artistic construction?

LC: “I think artistic construction because in order for that line to feel complete, it has to be emotionally striking, and it can it can be funny. It can take me back to a certain place, but it just has to be more than one sentence. Maybe it can have two or three meanings…

“When I say ‘bumper sticker’, I’m just writing sentences that make me feel something. It can be a saying that’s twisted, or me describing the way I feel externally, like, instead of saying ‘I feel sad,’ I say ‘I hear those rustling leaves out on the lawn where my gaze is ever looking out upon,’”

AGD: Oh shit! 

LC: *Laughs* “Yeah, it’s overly poetic to a humor like, ‘Let me keep it satirical here,” and I like that. So each one has to have kind of its own world. Once I write, like, 50 or more, I can Frankenstein them together to make sense. It’s a very new process, and something I did not do in the EP.” 

AGD: So how did the EP work? 

LC: It was me recording first and then going section by section, saying, ‘What should I say here?’, scrambling for lines.

AGD: You’ve described New York as both overwhelming and creatively liberating. How do you navigate the tension between feeling overstimulated by the scene and using it as a space to experiment? 

LC: This place is less chaotic for me when I treat it as a playground. And so that took having friends. I think if you take this city seriously, you will take yourself too seriously. 

AGD: Thats so funny because guess where I was born and raised? 

LC: See, that’s a completely different thing. Moving here is a totally different story. A very common one and quite cliche, but with that said I’m just, I’m not a city person. Every other place that I have lived in  has been very spacious and natural. So,coming here, it’s been about ‘How do I get out of this city? How do I make this feel the way that I am used to?’ So I moved into an apartment that has a backyard. 

I get a bit of that space and nature, and then I get to go out in the city and see a bunch of people.

AGD: It’s very “Yin-yang” right? There’s that peace and solace but also that chaotic energy…

LC: “The chaotic energy is me taking things in, and then when I find myself in peace, alone outside of the city is when it spews out. I love tour for that reason, because being stuck in the bus with my friends, it flies out.”

AGD: You previously mentioned shifting from tightly controlling production to giving the band more freedom, especially in live settings. What did you have to unlearn emotionally or creatively to let go of that control? 

LC: “I think that a lot of people who decide to be songwriters and musicians are control freaks at heart. It’s something that I think each of them at some point have to unlearn and realize, ‘Oh, I can say whatever I want to say and play whatever I want to play.’ That was also me growing up as a songwriter thinking, ‘If I have the song stripped down and it works, then I can let my band do whatever they want with it, and it’ll still work and it might be cooler.’ It’s worth trying instead of me telling them what to play.”

AGD: Do you think that changed the “truth” of the songs?

LC: “It shifts a lot. It shifts the songs that I write after that. It’s really freeing because I would have freaked out, like, ‘Why is it not sounding like the way I recorded it?’,  instead of letting it morph to something that works in all of our ears instead of just mine.

AGD: What do you hope to achieve this year with Ken Park? 

LC: “Growing more trees.”

AGD: What kind of trees?

LC: “Sequoias. It’s a big one. A big, tall pine tree in Northern California that I’ve never seen before. It’s a precious, precious tree.”

AGD: Would you say that Ken Park is a very precious tree?

LC: “Yes. And I need need the people to water it and hug it.” 
Ken Park is out on all streaming platforms. You can visit here to stream or here to purchase a vinyl.