Parkingstone’s new compilation, Dognight, is a bit of a thief’s diary of queer lives within the straight 90’s / 00’s genres
Parkingstone comes and goes with compilations and parties. First at Montreuil’s weirdo Chinois, then in a few institutions, and tomorrow in an Irish pub in the 20th arrondissement.
A mythical party and Simone Thiébaut‘s no less mythical label, Parkingstone offers its most atypical and undoubtedly densest compilation of recent years. Not really an electronic or club compilation, and not really an experimental one either, Dognight is a bit like a thief’s diary of queer lives within the straight genres of the 90s/ 00s. There’s neo-metal, death-doom, punk rock, rap digests, electronic music, Eurodance quotes and even a Madonna cover. It’s a compilation that’s hard to describe, each artist present having taken great pleasure in sending in contributions that don’t necessarily resemble what we know about them. On the face of it, this is a far cry from the ketamine boogie and 150 bpm minimum dancefloors we’ve been familiar with for the past few years. We’re more subtle here, and of course, we’ll be dancing, but it’s more like a big noise/pop rock/trap/metal/rap/electronica mashup. Mashup is probably the best way to define Dognight, firstly because it crosses so many genres and sub-genres that are those of teenagers and the children of millennials and Gen Z, but above all because it has something extra.
When we watched Buffy in the 2000s, we saw it as a slightly queer, hyper-coded island in a 100% straight landscape. Still, it’s a bit the opposite as if we’d moved into a hyper-trans* world where every hyper-straight genre could be caricatured to the max to make something else out of it. The final track on Cel Genesis alone sums up the spirit of the album, with its half-noise, half-metal vocals covered with a kind of light distortion that could make TikTok trends so successful, a hardcore sound and a cover of O-zone in English, with moments worthy of Autechre and almost baile funk rhythms. You might think it’s a compilation of crazy zoomers, but it’s much more than that: it’s a form of queer ephemera.
Queer ephemera is a concept by J. E. Muñoz, who theorizes the idea that in a dominant heterosexual political regime, queer space-time and durations can be wrested from the regime in place. This is what Jean Genet was already thinking and doing in his Diary of the Thief, and it’s also what Dognight and the Parkingstone parties have been doing for almost 10 years now, with no detours. Trashy performances are included because we prefer John Waters and Divine to a queer franchise.
Dognight is also a good scrolling session where you can find hardcore gabber from Blk Slk, death-doom from VIOLENCE (the artist who brought guitars out of hetero-fascism) or rap-pop prowess from Ish Couture or even Nasty Noona who tries her hand at balladry… In a hyper-reactionary moment, when the extreme right is killing and condemning the world in abominable massacres, deportations and genocides, it’s always high time to think about the great replacement of the heterosexual regime. Dognight is part of it, and Parkingstone parties, more than ever.
Over the past decade, Parkingstone has blazed a truly queer, edgy and demanding trail in a capital city that is often smooth and well-behaved and knows only how to canalize the children of the reactionary bourgeoisie that runs the country. For many, and us, this is important, and thank you. So let’s get the hell out of here and dance hard on the ruins.
Dognight is available on all platforms, and the release party takes place tomorrow, Friday, October 18, at Corcoran’s, place du Maquis du Vercors, 75020 Paris. Get your tickets here.
