Will August Park

New York-based producer & composer Will August Park announces his debut album, Doff, out December 6th via UNO NYC. Today, he shares lead single “Doff” with an accompanying video directed by Alec Moeller and starring Jacob McCarthy (of TV’s Mary & George, Rogue Heroes).

Will August Park makes impressionist piano music that radiates across New York and beyond. Last year, Park sent tranquil ripples through the electronic underground with veteran J. Albert on their joint release Flat Earth (named one of marg.mp3’s Top 10 Albums of 2023). After scoring various independent films and shorts, Park has continued to level up his craft, resulting in his solo debut album. Doff’s sound world intersects at the late 90s electronica’s flirtation with drum & bass, the modal jazz of Bill Evans, and the creeping, aural hypnotics of experimentalists like Laurel Halo. 

Of the lead single and title track, Will explains: “‘Doff’ is about trying to find a through line in your sense of self over different periods of life. Parsing through what you can change about your psyche and what will never change.  How you see yourself and how the world sees you. For better or for worse. For me the video is asking if we can really change who we are.”

Director Alec Moeller elaborates on the video: “With ‘Doff,’ we wanted to convey a sense of dissociation, and depersonalization, which I coincidentally was going through myself at the time. It’s a meditation on the relationship with yourself, past, present & future. Will is a film composer, so the cinematic nature was justified by reverse engineering that process and making a film for music. I went into it with the intention of making a silent film with ‘Doff’ as the score.” 

A cerebral mix of obscure dream states and stuttered, choral optimism make Doff a twisting rabbit hole of curiosity. Park provides the perfect soundtrack to ephemeral side streets where cigarette smoke and storefront LED lights clash. These are not jazz club standards or raw, blissed out analog electronics. A spiral staircase-like tracklist conjures Doff’s smoky saxophone soliloquies against bass-lead, drill tinged sounds, before emptying into a bright sonic plane where Elden Ring meets Vangelis. 

Park initially conceived the record after moving back home to Ventura, CA during a personal breakdown. Thanks to sponsorship by Yamaha, Park wrote the second half of Doff while on tour in Japan and in dialogue with the city of Tokyo. The record’s staggering sequence spins an introverted traveler’s monologue, insisting ‘underground music should be held to the serious regard of classical compositions’ unlike back in the West. A cinematic journey through self realization, wavering trust and collaging ruptured genres makes Doff a repeat listen. Linking with Paul Corley for co-production, mixing & mastering injected flavors of his purview — namely on the giant shoulders of Oneohtrix Point Never, Tim Hecker, and Nico Muhly.

Park insists this is not sad boy ambient music. Doff’s confident stillness and austere attention to detail call on classic Eastern-inspired sounds of his favorites Ravel and Debussy, and in turn, their reflexive impact on synth pioneers like Sakamoto & Toshifumi Hinata who Park namechecks in his experimental productions. Following in the wake of UNO NYC iconoclasts like Venezuelan songstress Arca, R&B diva Ian Isiah, and enfant terrible painter Chino Amobi, Park finds a synthesis that holds up to the wide spectrum of the roster, walking the line between Kuwaiti composer Fatima Al Qadiri and ambient queen Malibu.