Koen Park

Koen Park is the electronic music moniker of ambient artist Ian Hawgood. Utilising live instrumentation in an electronic framework, he performed with circuit bent synths, guitars, drums, and vintage synths recorded in bedrooms and gear shops around Tokyo, Puglia, and London between 2001 and 2009 mostly.

The music is an amalgamation of his love of early electronic music made on tape alongside his ambient sensibilities, with a focus on just having fun with all manner of musical instruments. Stemming from his first synth (Roland JP8000) and sampler (Akai S20), Hawgood recorded as a document to his time spent travelling the world, and living in London and Tokyo in his early twenties, with recordings made with friends and family typically in the background making this a deeply personal project to this day.

His first live performance was in support of Prefuse 73 (Warp Records) at the Bellingham Electronic Arts Festival in 2006 before moving back to Japan a month later where he regularly performed live and DJ’ed, prior to setting up the Home Normal label to release ambient music.

Released on underground electronic labels such as Experimedia, Smallfish, Headphonica, I Absentee, October Man, Best Kept Secret, and Acroplane the work gained a cult following on the early netlabel scene. His album ‘Everything in Shadow’ was nominated for Best Album (any genre) at the Qwartz Awards in Paris in 2009, marking his final recording under this moniker.

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