Deantoni Parks

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Moss Arts Center at Virginia Tech

Using the creative moniker “Technoself,” experimental composer and percussionist Deantoni Parks blends technology, hip-hop, sampling, and electronica to create fascinating sonic experiences covering a variety of progressive styles.

Parks has been a member of new wave contortionists Kudu and art rockers Bosnian Rainbows. As a recording and performing drummer, he has worked with a broad scope of artists, including Yohimbe Brothers, Alice Smith, Meshell Ndegeocello, the Mars Volta, John Cale, and Flying Lotus. Parks has also found time to produce material under his own name, from high-powered synth pop instrumentals to chopped-up beatscapes. Touch But Don't Look was released in 2012 through RLP, operated by frequent collaborator Omar Rodríguez-López. Technoself arrived three years later on the Stones Throw-affiliated Leaving label.

Georgia-born Parks grew up in a family with musical preferences leaning towards funk, Southern soul, and gospel. With their full support, he began playing drums at age two and was put in the national spotlight before the age of five for a performance with the Newnan High School band. 

He later explored jazz as a teen with Delbert Felix and chose to enroll at Berklee College of Music, where study with Lenny Nelson and exposure to Photek, Squarepusher, and Hidden Agenda turned his focus to the mechanistic beats of electronic music.

Currently based in Brooklyn, he is a vested partner in a developing audio/visual communications agency. In between writing and performances he serves as part-time faculty at Stanford Jazz Workshop, Berklee College of Music, and New York City’s Drummers Collective.

This is the first performance by Deantoni Parks at the Moss Arts Center.

Co-sponsored by the Black Cultural Center