Hometown: Brighton.
The lineup: Rob Flynn (vocals, production) and Ian Booth (bass), with help live from Chris “Chip” Phillips (guitar/keys/percussion), Alex Baron (ditto) and Thom Pettit (drums).
The background: Talking of powerful men indulging in questionable, even dangerous, political posturing … remember that strange moment in May 1976 when David Bowie rode into Victoria station in an open-topped Mercedes and raised his arm in what appeared to be a Nazi salute? Rob Flynn’s granddad, then working at Bowie’s label RCA in the A&R department, was there: you can see him, in that iconic image of the procession, standing at one corner of the limo. He’s also there, somewhere, in the background in the famous shot of Bowie at Marc Bolan’s funeral the following year. Flynn loves Bowie and channels this era when he sings, even if his voice has more of the boyish blankness of Bernard Sumner with some of Dave Gahan’s darkly cherubic croon. Similarly, the brooding and buoyant electronic dance music that he makes as Øslø Pårks, with bassist Ian Booth, is born out of Bowie’s sojourn in Berlin, even if it actually has more in common with Bowie’s 80s progeny. We can hear New Order, Depeche Mode, OMD … Listeners attuned to more recent developments have drawn comparisons with Metronomy, Blood Orange and Hot Chip.
“I think it’s an era when synth music really had soul,” Flynn says of the 80s, explaining how Øslø Pårks’ doleful disco comes about. “I listen to a lot of slow, sad music but whenever I try to make music like that myself it ends up like a party tune, even if did start in a dark place.”
Some dismiss the 80s as a period of ra-ra-skirted escapist entertainment when really it was a golden age of lugubrious pop electronica. It was a time of cold war tension and living under the shadow of a nuclear threat. Ring any bells?
“I never thought of our music as representative of our time politically,” says Flynn, “but maybe it’s the perfect breeding ground for it.”
Heavy on reverb and slapback delay – though he points out that the latter was employed extensively at Sun Studios on Elvis Presley’s earliest recordings – Øslø Pårks make their fantastically forlorn music in Flynn’s home studio in Worthing. They use synth bass, keyboards and layered harmonies as the background to their explorations of relationship problems and the alienating effects of social media. On The Night, over a propulsive bassline, Flynn sings, “We don’t have forever,” as he waits for the phone to ring – moments of tedium and quotidian banality given dramatic heft by the melodies and rhythms. Their first single, Twin (picked up by French label Kitsuné for inclusion on their New Faces II compilation) compared love to being in a coma and was about the way we create false versions of ourselves online. “They’re like digital twins – they’re what we want to be,” he says.
On their newest song, Like a Stone, the intention was to create something “nice and bright and summery” about “doing stupid stuff and growing from it and becoming a better person”. Inevitably, it sounds like exquisitely tortured breakup music. Recent track Fiction is like a smash hit that never was from that episode of Black Mirror set in a fictional 80s, San Junipero. Or you could imagine its nightclub shadows and urban disquiet in a scene from Grand Theft Auto where your avatar careens around listening to 80s pop.
“We love that game. Soundtracking GTA is our dream,” he says, before snapping us out of our retro reverie with some common sense. “Second, of course, to being written about in the Guardian.”
The buzz: “This is what Metronomy should have kept sounding like.”
The truth: Music for dancing till the bomb drops.
Most likely to: Talk loud and clear.
Least likely to: Leave in silence.
What to buy: Like a Stone is released in May.
File next to: Metronomy, Hot Chip, OMD, Depeche Mode.
Link: soundcloud.com/oslo-parks
Ones to watch: Cold Motorway, Talk Like Tigers, Parcels, Tayá, Superbody.
