Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti – ‘Grey Sunset’ (2004)

“I was ready to live underneath the radar, and eke out some kind of existence doing it, but my plan got foiled…”

What do you think about being classified in terms of hauntology or hypnagogic pop?

“I love it, I love it. It beats lo-fi! I’m just happy to be doing it. After years of making music, I had resigned myself to thinking, it’s a dream, you’re not going to be discovered. I taught art at the elementary school that I attended. I’d stay up all night recording, go to a job and then continue. I had girlfriends who thought I was having an affair with my eight-track! I was ready to live underneath the radar, and eke out some kind of existence doing it, but my plan got foiled…”

By success?

“I appreciate my following. I know it’s a finite thing. It’s not going to last forever – there isn’t much future for me because I’m a man (laughs). At this point, I’m 32, and I don’t have any skills to start a new career.”

What was  it that drew you into music in the first place?

“I realised since my early youth that I had an affinity for it, that it had an odd effect on me, something akin to learning about memory for the first time, and being able to realise upon reflection , that something that was part of you, like a song, had a resonating effect back then. Something isn’t the same any more. You’ve lost the feeling that it initially gave you, before you even knew you’d enjoyed it. Maybe the first time you hear it, it blows your mind, or maybe it just seeps in. I relish the moment when I hear something that I hadn’t heard before, and I know right then that I’m going to be singing it in the street. You can’t wait for the effect of being introduced to something you’ve never heard before. That sublimeness, it’s at the core of you.”

Was it listening to stuff on the radio that was important to you early on?

“No, it was MTV. Then a bit later it was metal. That’s how I forged an identity with music. It was my own thing. It felt as if no-one else knew about it, that I’d invented it.”

K-Punk

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