Arlo Parks: “Everyone’s in the dark, and everyone’s being blasted by the same speakers"

At visionary New York DJ and dance culture pioneer Larry Levan’s Paradise Garage in early ’80s NYC, a feral-but-sacred congregation gathered weekly for what became known as Saturday Mass. Levan stretched tracks into revelations in a release of sweat, sound and shared salvation. Why mention Levan?

In researching the album, Parks delved deep into nocturnal spaces and club culture, starting at the now-closed Black Flamingo club in New York, where she experienced a transformative moment listening to a DJ mixing Duke and Afro beats. That inspired her to intentionally seek out similar underground spaces, and dive deep into the history of near-mythical venues such as Paradise Garage and The Loft.

“I just felt like I was lost in that music,” Arlo explains. “I felt this real sense of belonging. After that moment, I decided to more intentionally explore these spaces. When I was in London, LA and Berlin, I would seek out those communities. I learned so much about myself, and was so inspired by the sounds of those spaces and the way that it felt to be there.”

INSPIRED BY READING

If Carlsberg could do research projects…

“It was fun to have that as work,” Arlo laughs. “I was also inspired by reading about those spaces, but also reading about the architecture, the lighting design, and going through the archives of flyers and getting inspired by different fonts. The creative packaging of the record was also inspired by some of the aesthetic of the spaces.”

Arlo crafted the album with producer Baird, their process unfolding between NYC’s vibrant, community-rooted nightlife and long, introspective days spent in Baird’s downtown loft, lost in an insular world of their creation, in books and films.

“I was really inspired by Taiwan new wave films,” Arlo details, “that take place in these vast metropolises – the movies of Wong Kar-wai, or Tsai Ming-Liang’s Rebels Of The Neon God, which I love. I love the way that both Taiwanese new wave films and also French new wave use quite minimal language. It’s more about the body language and the spaces in between. I learned a lot about different kinds of storytelling through those films.

“In terms of literature,” she continues, “I was reading a lot of Maggie Nelson. I’m looking at my bookshelf now – there’s a publishing house I love called Fitzcarraldo, and they have this book called Rave by this guy called Rainald Goetz. It’s fragments of snatched conversations, but it felt like poetry to me. I was also reading a lot of Gary Indiana and Kim Gordon’s autobiography, and just being fascinated by New York and the way that subcultures form, and artists from different mediums collaborate.”

Album opener ‘Blue Disco’ comes straight from the trenches –“Lolita’s cousin is out the back being sick... smell of chips and gin… the walls are scratched out...” and there’s the sound of Goldie and Prince in the air – the detail is exquisite.

“I think for me,” Arlo explains,  “journaling, preserving those details and that specificity is something that’s so important in my music. That’s the kind of storytelling I gravitate to. With a record like Either/Or by Elliot Smith, there’s always this sense of setting the scene. You feel like you were really there, I think that’s really important in my storytelling.”

‘Heaven’ is a showstopper – the jungle underbelly of it, with its frenzied break beat, and then your beautiful, calm vocal buoyant above.

“I’ve described this record as an album of contrasts,” Arlo replies. “It’s about light and shade, about pain and euphoria. I wanted to reflect the friction between those two things.”

You sing,“I wish I had the language to tell you the way this feels” – but sonically you express it perfectly.

“There’s a misconception that electronic music can’t be soulful,” Parks explains, “that it’s repetitive. But for me, it’s so emotive, so much is said in the music – the way the drums interact with the vocal, the way things soar and crash. And the way the bass and drums syncopate, there’s so much movement and energy. So, I thought it was important to bring that into the music.”

It’s all there – what it means to be a body in a room, moving with other bodies, becoming anonymous but existing collectively.

“There was an exciting regular crew of people I would go out with,” Arlo recalls, “and you create your own little oasis together in this mass of people. Everyone’s in the dark, and everyone’s being blasted by the same speakers. There’s something about surrendering to that which is really special.”

Sampha meanwhile delivers a sublime vocal on ‘Senses’ – and he’s not too shabby on the old piano either!

GREAT FREEDOM

Arlo laughs gleefully, “Oh, I love that, ‘not too shabby’! I mean that was super special to me. I think when it comes to Black British artists who are in this almost genre-less world of their own, there’s this signature sound and specific taste you know they resonate with. So, bringing that energy onto the album – someone whose music I was listening to a lot like during the making of the record – and then having that person actually be a part of it was so special.”

There’s just so much space on this record. I feel the record granted you great freedom, both artistically and spatially.

“That was very much a choice,” Arlo says. “Often before, the vocal and the poetry was at the forefront – it was taking up a lot of space. I wanted to see what happened if I were a little more minimal, allowing the things that exist to have even more weight, allowing the music to speak and say what language couldn’t. I’m glad you recognise that, because I worked really hard to strike that balance.”

How is your live show evolving ahead of upcoming performances?

“I’m actually working on it as we speak,” Arlo outlines. “I had these sonic exploration shows at the end of last year, where I was bringing the samplers, the Ableton worlds, the loops and those real breaks to life. I’m going to be playing with the band I’ve played with since I was 17, because they’re amazing instrumentalists.

“So it’s going to be about having those familiar people around me, but reimagining the set. Also, it’s important to note that I want those older songs to feel like they’ve been preserved. It isn’t going to be about reworking every song, but creating a journey between those three records, which is a challenge but a beautiful one.”

• Ambiguous Desire it out now. Arlo Parks plays St. Anne’s Park, Dublin on June 7 with David Byrne and the Ambassador, Dublin on October 17