· via Martyn Pepperell
Parksdale
Selected Works is a weekly (usually) newsletter by the Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Aotearoa (Wellington, New Zealand) based freelance music journalist, broadcaster, copywriter and sometimes DJ Martyn Pepperell, aka Yours Truly. Most weeks, Selected Works consists of a recap of what I’ve been doing lately, along with some of what I’ve been listening to and reading, paired with film photographs I’ve taken, plus some bonuses. All of that said, sometimes it takes completely different forms. Over the last twenty-plus years, Brent Park, aka Parksdale, has been one of the more understated but valued contributors to modern music from Aotearoa and Te Waipounamu (New Zealand). He’s produced for Ladi6, sung with Eru Dangerspiel, Julien Dyne and the Otautahi All-Stars, and handled beats and pieces for Avantdale Bowling Club, From Scratch, Tom Scott and more, all without making much fuss. Now, it’s time for him to show us what he can do as a solo artist. Clocking in at 35 minutes, Look! is the debut album from Parksdale, a composer, synthesist and producer based in Tāmaki Makaurau, Aotearoa. Over thirteen cinematic dreamscapes, he maps out an interior soundworld shaped by early electronic compositions, library music, modular synthesis, and the curated listening practices that have grown out of hip-hop and sample-based production in the mode of RZA and Madlib. The album’s starting point exists within the mind’s eye: the feeling of remembering something that never happened, or visualising a location that doesn’t actually exist. As a musician, Parksdale’s inspiration encompasses 1960s holiday brochures, vintage Rolex advertisements, and obscure religious propaganda. Although their messages vary, they share an overlapping promise: luxury, technology and spirituality presented as a paradisical vision of a better tomorrow. That same sense of rose-tinted idealism flows through the early electronic music Parksdale draws from, particularly the works of pioneers like Raymond Scott, Delia Derbyshire, Isao Tomita, Piero Umiliani and Mort Garson. These were uncodified, genuinely new sounds from a brilliant moment when modular synthesis and state-of-the-art studio equipment belonged to a brighter future: sleek chrome steel, unfamiliar frontiers and endless possibilities. Look! reassesses that legacy through the ears of a beatmaker raised on hip-hop and sample-based production. Sampling provided Parksdale with an asymmetrical musical education, leading him down corridors of history he might have never explored otherwise. In his ears, Italian film soundtrack music, Brazilian music, jazz, library music and early electronics became a constellation linked by the heightened emotional intensity of the loops his favourite producers chose to lift. “The common thread in the things that people sample in the music I grew up on is usually an emotional quality rather than a specific genre or sound. This music belongs to that lineage” - Parksdale Before recording Look!, Parksdale explored his fascination with sample packs and music written specifically for sampling while completing a Master of Arts. Across Look!, he plays with the idea of expanding handmade samples into complete pieces of music. In his hands, what could be a twenty-second loop becomes a fully realised composition full of moments to be cut, chopped and looped. By Parksdale’s exacting standards, the album was made quickly. Most of it was composed over a month, with further material developed in studio sessions with his longtime collaborators Brandon Haru, Toby Laing, Riki Pirihi and Michael August aka Lord Echo. Having previously completed a multi-year production project, he wanted Look! to feel natural and unaffected. “I just wanted this to be fun and natural. Whatever happened while I was in that mode became the final product.” - Parksdale Although modular synthesis is the album’s primary melodic voice, Parksdale found himself renewing his relationship with guitar, the first instrument he ever learned, while composing and recording Look! Song by song, it served as a compositional intermediary, a way to build arrangements before transposing them through synthesis. The results represent a rare opportunity to step inside Parksdale’s singular soundworld and explore his memories of the future through the looking-glass mirrors of retrofuturist visions and utopian ideals of the past. About Parksdale Parksdale is a New Zealand composer, synthesist and producer who works in electronic music, production and contemporary sample culture. His practice is underscored by hip-hop beatmaking, early electronic music, guitar, and modular synthesis, as well as extensive experience producing for Ladi6. Subscribe OCTO: Friday 11 September, Wellington On Friday, I’m dusting off the records and heading down to Octo at 102 Aro Street in Wellington to play a three-hour all-vinyl DJ set from 7-10 PM. Expect a bit of everything. It’s free entry, but the place fills up fast. Get in early if you want to come along and enjoy the vibes. Share Enrolathon: Saturday 12 September, Wellington On Saturday, I’m one of a bevy of DJs and live performers who will be playing music and getting up to other shenanigans at PEG Gallery, 230 Cuba Street, between 10 am and 10 pm. If you’re wondering about your enrolment status, drop through, check out your situation on the spot, and enjoy some tunes with us. If you check your enrolment, you go in the draw to win goodies from @decoy_knitwear @turumeke @bakergramercy @coffee_supreme @15minutebottles @currentartmagazine and PEG Radioactive DJs on the decks all day: DJ Poets, Manakin, Seini, Jasmine, Martyn Pepperell, Subtle Grape, Club Medder & Maximillian, plus local performers Rens and Blip the Siren. See you there? Share Selected Works Paddy Fred, Changes: Thanks to Paddy Fred for inviting me to write the sales notes for his forthcoming new album, Changes. We hosted a great listening party over the weekend. Thanks to everyone who came along to 113 on Friday. Changes is the long-awaited debut album from Paddy Fred, a guitarist, beatmaker, singer-songwriter, and producer based on Wellington’s rugged south coast in Aotearoa New Zealand. Entirely self-produced, it shares the same spirit as his cult 2022 EP Spells, blending shuffling programmed beats with the lush textures and hazy guitars of chillwave, dream-pop, and experimental rock. A longstanding musician, Paddy began in rock, soul and funk bands in the 2000s. He turned his hand towards beatmaking after visiting Los Angeles, crossing paths with Flying Lotus’s Brainfeeder collective, and attending the storied Low End Theory party. In 2013, he produced his debut EP, Laminate, and became a father. “Before having kids I was so wrapped up in my own stuff,” he says. “The first few years of parenting were honestly the happiest. My priorities were so clear.” After settling into parenting, a feeling of sadness and depression crept in from the periphery. “It basically came down to the fact I’d disconnected from music, which had been my lifeline since I was a teenager,” he continues. Once he started spending time in his home studio again and created ‘Found You’, the penny dropped. In his words, “It felt like a big, warm hug. I was so grateful I cried. Music was there all along waiting for me to come back.” Over ten vivid tracks, he reflects on parenting, the shared life he’s built with his partner, and his search for balance amid chaos. Written with guitars, keyboards, recording hardware and software, the album traverses joy, loss, gratitude and grief, understanding emotion as a healing force, as rendered through a mixture of analogue warmth and digital clarity. On Changes’ lead single, ‘Together’, Paddy leans all the way into unconditional love, reminding his children he’ll be there in the good times and bad, while giving himself grace in every moment. Fittingly, Changes brought Paddy full circle while opening new doors. “Before this album there wasn’t much guitar or any singing in my beatmaking,” he says. “Beatmaking started as an escape from the live bands I was playing in. Here I reconnected with the guitar—the instrument I know best—and started singing for the first time. It felt like a mainline to my subconscious. Changes was a very therapeutic process. It gave me perspective, helped me see what I was grateful for and what I was missing.” Changes is due for release through Extra Soul Perception/First Word Records on 09/11/2026 UK time. FIN.
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