Parkside

During spring 2001, singer/ guitarist/ lyricist Rene de Wilde decides to move from the Dutch capitol Amsterdam to the more rural eastern part of the country. In retrospect, this turned out to be a first essential step in the coming about of the new Dutch post-pop act Parkside.

Having to resign his job as a business economist (due to episodes of ‘slight mental instability’), Rene decides to now devote all his time to writing and performing music. Besides an obscure talent for making his guitar sound like Erik Satie on mescaline, Rene is gifted with a voice that draws from a colourful emotional pallet, being able to elicit goose bumps as well as a chronic migraine.

Soon after settling in his new residence, Rene is introduced to ‘digitalist’ Bram van den Oever, who after years of exercising vocal pyrotechnics in the ranks of several Dutch acts, appears to have a rather morbid fascination with the mutilation of sound chunks. Having ‘cut-copy-paste’ written all over him, he masters the fine art of turning purring cats into drumkits, and buzzing refrigerators into the London Symphony Orchestra. And vice versa!

Like Rene, Bram recently traded social duties for social security (due to unpredictable ‘mood swings’), and the idea to join musical forces seemed only natural. Aware of the fact that a third psychic would result in a smaal scale mental institution rather than a musical collaboration, Bram and Rene decided to recruit multi-instrumentalist Rob den Otter and turn Parkside into a three-piece company. With an academic degree in experimental psychology (which indeed comes in handy given the bands overall mental condition), and currently working hard on his PhD thesis, Rob adds just that little bit of scientific rationality needed to balance out the craziness of his two fellow musicians.

Impressionistic soundscapes slowly turn into coherent pop songs, while coherent pop is easily redirected towards sonic pandemonium. despite occasional episodes of wild experimentation, and a continuous subdued musical tension, the sounds of Parkside (www.parksidemusic.nl) are not ‘hard on the ear’, and remain remarkably ‘consumable’.

esc.rec. releases:
J’ee-haw! Parkside Remix - cat.# esc.rec.2
Million Scientists (demo) - cat.# esc.rec.3