We caught up with Thomas Jackson Park, the person behind the projects Mystified, Mister Vapor and Grid Resistor. He's been releasing with us since 2005.
Hello, could you please tell us a little more about yourself? Where are you from, what do you do for a living?
I live in Saint Louis, Missouri, in the U.S.A.. I have lived in Saint Louis for most of my life. I earn a living working as a technical assistant for the city library system.
How did you first get into music production?
I had always wanted to be a dj as a young man, and a friend who was into computers recommended some sample mixing software for me to try back in the late 1990's. That was it, I was hooked.
You run your own label Treetrunk, can you tell us a little more about it? Why and how did you form it?
Treetrunk Records began as a vehicle for my fractal compositions. I did not think other netlabels would want to feature that material. A bit later I expanded the types of music included to phonographic material. Finally, I opened up submissions to most typed of experimental music.
You're not only a musician but also a painter, is it all part of the same creative process or do you see it as separate things?
Although my use of the different media developed at different times, I am sure there are connections between them. For example, I tend toward the abstract both in sound and in visual art.
What's the difference between your different music monikers?
My main project was mystified, which was an ambient drone act that I retired in 2017 after many thousands of tracks had been created. Mister Vapor was also retired this year-- it was meant to be for hazier, foggier ambient musics. Grid Resistor was an industrial drone act that I started and finished in 2017-- for this act, only machine sounds were used as source material. Model 201 is a newer act, and for it, I use only recycled sounds ripped from old mystified cassettes.
Can you share with us what is your current studio setup?
I have a very simple setup. I use a desktop PC that has a nice sound card and some various softwares, such as ACID, Sound Forge, a processing program called Ambient, and several others. I also have some gear for collecting sounds, such as a DR-5 recording device and a contact microphone made by Crank Sturgeon. I can get a lot done with this gear.
Do you play live often? If so, how does your setup differ live from studio?
I have only played live a small number of times. When I did, I used random mixing processes in a live context. One performance was over the internet for a local radio station. I used Skype to send a signal from my PC to the station's studio, then that was broadcast over the airwaves. To mix randomly, I simply used a series of free media players set on shuffle, playing simultaneously.
Why release your work on the netaudio scene? What drove you to seek out netlabels? Do the same premises still hold today?
Honestly, at a certain point, I realized I could either try to make money and possibly thereby restrict my listener base, or I could try to get lots of listeners by giving away my music on netlabels. I chose the latter. Ever since, I have been more interested in gaining listenership than in making money. The same generally holds true today, with the exception of certain specific higher-production releases, such as "Morning City" on Spotted Peccary Recordings.
You've recently came out in public announcing you had paranoid schizophrenia for quite a few years now, in what way did your illness influence your create process all these years?
I can't be sure how deeply the illness affects my process- probably in more ways than I realize. But in a very concrete fashion, I had many thousands of hours of free time for a number of years, as I was living alone in an apartment on a government stipend. It seemed natural to use this time to create music.
I am guessing my illness led to my music being a bit off-center in some ways- Though this was certainly intentional, I also wonder-- was it unavoidable?
How has been the experience of coming out? Have you noticed any difference on how people approach you since coming out?
Generally, people have been nothing but encouraging. Most people don't openly acknowledge knowing about my schizophrenia. Those who do do so in the context of a friendly hand on the shoulder, making sure I don't need anything.
What advice can you give to people who are getting started in producing and releasing their work?
I have a very simple technical bit of advice. Avoid "clipping". Clipping is the phenomenon when a recording is made that is too loud for the device capturing it. It results in a loss of detail in the sound. Distorted effects result. Audio artists need to practice finding feasible rendering and recording levels-- this will ensure that they sound their best, and help them to create sounds that are memorable over the long haul.