About Parking Non-Stop

PARKING NON-STOP is a psychogeographical experiment in combining soundscape and field recordings with songs, spoken word and instrumentation. Parking Non-Stop is always on the move, but simultaneously always at a standstill, listening to rush-hour traffic, the chink of a beer glass or the fall of broken slate into a mountain lake.

Dewi Evans, Alan Holmes and Zoë Skoulding explore the sonic geography of a wider Europe within the context of their north Wales home by means of musical pieces that integrate field recordings they have made in various European locations with recordings made in their own home studios.

These pieces generally combine an experimental soundscape approach with an aesthetic that veers unpredictably between Europop and industrial minimalism.

They aim to achieve a distinctive north Wales sound that is based in discovering new spatial and temporal resonances: this is not a musical identity built from a mythical past, but an engagement with the sonic possibilities of the mines, quarries and rusting machinery in the landscape as it is today - a decaying rural-industrial environment rich with unexpected noise.

Although primarily a recording project, Parking Non-Stop also perform live, often in collaboration with like-minded musicians, poets and artists. Recent performances have taken place in Wales, England, Ireland, Slovakia, Bosnia, Norway, France and Germany.

Species Corridor - The Album

This album is created from recordings lovingly gathered over nearly a decade of travels around Europe and more local journeys around north Wales. Locations that have featured in recordings on this album range from the Buda Labyrinth in Budapest to prehistoric burial chambers on the island of Anglesey. The last few years have seen the shape of Europe change beyond recognition; Parking Non-Stop are fascinated by the edges and borders of Europe, and movement across them. The title track of Species Corridor features a rhythm track made from recording of a European bison in Eastern Poland kicking itself in the head to get rid of flies. The rare primeval forest where it lives, Bialowieza, became the new border of the EU in 2004 amid heated debates about how to stop people migrating illegally while allowing the bison and other protected species to wander freely. Parking Non-Stop’s music inhabits these tensions by exploring every locality as a border area where languages, sounds and cultures mingle and cross.

Process

Underpinning Parking Non-Stop’s sound is a painstaking process of digital collage. Parking Non-Stop's music always incorporates field recordings (to a lesser or greater extent), whether as background ambience, basic rhythm tracks or upfront vocal focus. There are no drum sounds on the album: all rhythms are created through the positioning of field recordings, most of which are made from slate dropped, thrown and smashed in the quarries of Snowdonia. These are combined with vocals and more conventional instrumentation to create an aesthetic that hovers on the border between avant-garde and pop, challenging the certainties of both.