Parco Palaz: I’m interested in music from the label and boundaries – the scene

As I say, his path was not straight, but like a chaotic diagram between good parties and bad dreams. The piano and violin was replaced by sempler and gramophones for fourteen – everything exploded through hip-hop, bits and club nights. The clubs were his laboratory, while the body remembered what theory could not explain.

– Electronic music has cramped me naturally: Detroit Techno, Chicago House, Dubstep, French Wave – all in the connection with hip-hop rhythm. The audioodesign and composition studies have opened a new world, where every sound could become music. I performed throughout Europe, and the first expenditures also connected me with the Colombian scene. Later, the Balkan influence returned as part of my identity – through the scents, speech and tunes from the car, « says Parco Palaz, and we just had the reason for the Balkan moment.

Namely, PARCO Palaz He recently published a new turn, which is lucidly merged homely with sound nightclubs and already presented in the Basel.

– After studying, I got into a crisis – too much listening, too many ways, too many possibilities.  » So many good music you don’t know where you belong. The turn was created from that saturation – not like a nostalgia, but like trying to struggle, to return something, but not as a territory, but as a feeling, « Parco’s palaz says at the very beginning of the interview.

Why Park Palaz, is there a symbolic related to music in the name itself?

– Honestly, the name found me more than I can. Everything was ready except the name. I randomly opened Joyso’s inhabit and encountered « Palaz ». The word had a special tone and internal logic. « PARCO » is aiming my uncle, painter and musician Mark of Richterih, whose creativity was instinctively and honest – great inspiration for me.

Switzerland – Serbian Origin, how much is the location, maybe nostalgia affected your sound?

– The origin certainly leaves a trace – through the language, rhythm of speech, memories I carry in the body. But when I create music, I’m not trying to « introduce » neither a place. I am more interested in what music can be when free from the label and boundaries.

I don’t believe music belongs to the territory. She travels, crosses the boundaries, changes the context and gets a new meaning. Although I grew up between the two worlds, what shaped me more than geography is careful listening – music, quiet, everyday sounds.

Nostalgia may be present, but not as sadness for last – more like a feeling that returns through the tone, rhythm, a voice from a distance. At the turn, it took me a need to combine something in person with something universal, which is not related to a particular place. I am not looking for identity in sound, but a connection – the one that arises when listening becomes a way of being. Music is not a frame, but a flow, space where different influences exist free. And just in those crossings between – in shades – often what is closest to me.

Would some influence singled out?

On the album turn, I was especially inspired by Sisters Janković and Svetlana Spajić – their work preserves his voice and collective memory. Also, the work of Burnt Friedman opened me a new look at the rhythm, not only as a decoration, but as a structure that bears the meaning.

In Swiss clubs, were you able to play your ethno colored compositions from the turn and how did the audience react to Serbian Melos? Did the fusion be interesting?

– The turn came out 9. May – On the day of the exit I organized a listening session in the Basel and let the whole album from the beginning to the end. The hall was full, reactions great, and the party after that even better. But it is still early for general conclusions. The real exchange with the audience is yet to be ahead, and I really look forward to it.

I’m interested in an album inspiration?

– The turn was created from the need to stop – to turn back and look back, not to return, but to understand where I am now. I have absorbed music from all sides for years: clubs, studies, cities, genres, forms … At one point I felt saturation. So much influence, and I no longer know where I came from – not even where I go.

Then I started coming back to the sounds: Childhood voices, the scenery from the trip, the rhythms that I unconsciously wore with me. I wanted to give them space – but through the language that is mine: electronically, sometimes sharp, sometimes fragile. The album varies from meditative to energetic moments, but everyone shares the same goal: to feel differences through the sound as part of the same current.

Turn by Parco Palaz

Where did you research the original ethno songs, would you single it out?

« I researched the work of Janković and archival footage from Kosovo and Metohija for the album. The introduction contains the shot of Gajdi Slobodan Dimitrijević, one of the few intact traditional sounds on the album. Interpretations of Ljubiša Pavković were a key model for electronic processing of old melodies like « Rumenke », « Đurđevka » or « Zika’s car ».

Which emotional process did you go through while you composed the album, is there a number of nostalgia or something else?

– The turn may have originated from the feeling of saturation – too many sounds, directions, other people’s maps. The more I entered the music of the root, the more clearly I was not looking for the past than the trace of one legality. Like something ancient, quietly and ubiquitely lay both in the sound and in me. Like I just took off the dust from something that was waiting for her to shake again.

I grew up with that emotion, that weight, that passion that exists in Serbian music – which I have always felt, and only later began to discern in the structure, language and form. As I studied metrics and ornaments, I realized that these are not styles, but formulas of feelings. Sound folders transmitted by emotions through generations – without words, without passports. From that moment, I haven’t « made » music anymore. I just listened to where he wanted to go.

At the same time you wonder: how to transfer it? How can the listener in Zurich, Belgrade or anywhere feel anything strong, even different? That challenge is the core of turn: I don’t tell a story, I let the emotion find my shape.

Even an art pack that visually presents it is awesome, how did it occur?

– He worked him by a flavio carrer – a combination of my portrait and family archives created a picture of which time was crossed. The turn is, in a way, the same: me now, under something that was before me.

I heard that mix of tribal and ethno sound with electronics frequent in clubs and in artists outside Serbia, why is it so and can you see the shift in experimenting with music on our scene?

– It has long been dominated by a predominantly Eurocentric idea that music should sound and what it represents. Today, many artists refuse to repeat – people want something that truly touches them, which is not reduced to the genre or market.

Backing roots does not have to be regressive; On the contrary, it can be re-establishment of contact with collective, with something that exceeds us. Rave Culture 90s understood it – the identity was lost in the rhythm, not differently. Today, under the influence of social networks, we see fragmentation, constantly highlighting differences. Such individualization goes against the nature of music – and man.

The music is universal. I’m not looking for melodies with identity, but those that change the space as soon as they hear. Voltage, form, silence, pulse – These are things that lead me. When music works, you don’t ask more from where the sound is, but why he touched you right there.

On the new album you even have a song called Branko Bridge, what can you tell us about choosing song names and how did they affect the sound and vice versa?

– The names of the songs come subsequently. « Brank’s bridge » imposed spontaneously. The sound was wearing tension, as a frame from Makavejov film – concrete, torn, gentle. And at the car and the original songs, I kept the name – because it has already known what its called.

What else do you do, do you compose music for the film or needs of other art?

– I worked music and sound design for the film, theater and audio installations, but lately I enjoy the freedom of dealing exclusively with music.

You have more albums behind, would you briefly introduce us to the stories behind them, in terms of their teachers, did they come up with a concept?

– I especially point out the albums Lightning Struck and Tree and Surface. The first originated almost without thought – I let my hand lead. A little more raw sound, trip-hop shadows.

Surface is different – cleaner, electronic. There I tried to catch the energy of an intense period in life, marked with night scenes.

You also have cooperation with other artists, mention them.

– Cooperation with artists like Luca Durana, Superpuma, Lil Taty, Mafo or Atrice opened me new creative dimensions and always been space for play – other energy, other dynamics.

For the end – can we expect your performance in Serbia soon?

– I will perform at Jerma Art Festival (7.-10. August 2025) in the Special Jerma Nature Reserve. I look forward to dividing music in that unique ambience.

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