Ariel Pink
Ariel Marcus Rosenberg, professionally known as Ariel Pink, is an American musician, singer, and songwriter whose work draws heavily from the popular music of the 1960s–1980s. His lo-fi aesthetic and home-recorded albums proved influential to many indie musicians starting in the late 2000s. He is frequently cited as the "godfather" of the hypnagogic pop and chillwave movements, and he is credited with galvanizing a larger trend involving the evocation of the media, sounds, and outmoded technologies of prior decades, as well as an equal appreciation between high and low art in independent music.
A native of Los Angeles, Pink began experimenting with recording songs on an eight-track Portastudio as a teenager. His early influences were artists such as Michael Jackson, the Cure, and R. Stevie Moore. The majority of his recorded output stems from a prolific eight-year period in which he accumulated over 200 cassette tapes of material. Virtually all of his music released in the 2000s was written and recorded before 2004, the same year he debuted on Animal Collective's Paw Tracks label with The Doldrums, House Arrest and Worn Copy. The albums immediately attracted a cult following.
In the 2000s, Pink's unusual sound prompted a renewed critical discussion of hauntological phenomena, for which he was a central figure. Until 2014, his records were usually credited to Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti, a solo project sometimes conflated with his touring band. His fame and recognition escalated following his signing to 4AD and the success of his 2010 album Before Today, his first recorded in a professional studio. He then recorded three more albums – Mature Themes, Pom Pom, and Dedicated to Bobby Jameson – the last of which was recorded for Mexican Summer.
Throughout his career, Pink has been subject to several media controversies stemming from his occasional provocations onstage and in interviews. In 2021, he lost support from Mexican Summer following his presence in Washington, D.C., during the January 6 Capitol attack. He then formed a new band, Ariel Pink's Dark Side, with whom he recorded two albums, The Key of Joy Is Disobedience and Never Made A Demo, Ever.
Early life
Ariel Marcus Rosenberg was born in Los Angeles on June 24, 1978. He is the only son of Mario Z. Rosenberg and Linda Rosenberg-Kennett. Mario is a Harvard-educated gastroenterologist born to a Jewish family in Mexico City, while Linda is from New Orleans. They moved to Los Angeles after Mario completed his medical specialty work at Tulane University hospital in New Orleans. Ariel's first language was Spanish. Although his family is Jewish, with his mother having converted, he himself is not practicing. Mario and Linda divorced when Ariel was two years old.Ariel's parents encouraged him to pursue a career in visual arts rather than music. He said that "with music I had no discernible skills", whereas with drawing, they reportedly thought he was "going to be the next Picasso, and I believed them and I got better." According to Linda, she wanted him to pursue a career in acting: "Acting coaches would come to me and say, 'He's the only kid in that age group who can speak to a girl." He characterized himself as "maladjusted" as a child. Linda commented that he was "a very difficult guy to understand, except for the fact that his heart is pure. He'd rather be left alone. That's how he always was — even as a kid, he played much better by himself."
When he was young, Rosenberg was an avid record collector and reader of music magazines, he said, and "had a gross hunger for bootlegs and unofficial rare recordings by artists I worshiped; ate them all up and adopted certain criteria for what I longed for in music." He was first drawn to music through watching MTV. When his interest intensified, he was particularly fond of Michael Jackson, and after entering junior high school, expanded his tastes to metal, including bands like Def Leppard, Metallica, and Anthrax. He then developed a taste for "death rock" groups such as Bauhaus and the Cure, the latter being his favorite band of all time. Another artist he was particularly fond of was Lou Reed. He enjoyed the writings of rock critic Nick Kent and read Richie Unterberger's Unknown Legends of Rock 'n' Roll: Psychedelic Unknowns, Mad Geniuses, Punk Pioneers, Lo-Fi Mavericks & More ; later he recorded a cover version of one of the tracks included in a CD that came with the book.
Rosenberg was initially raised in Louisiana. He chose to live there with his mother following child custody proceedings. They lived in Pico-Robertson, and later, Bogalusa. Due to the bullying he received in junior high school, his parents sent him to live with his cousins in Mexico City for a year. There, he lost his virginity at age 13, to a prostitute named Sara, and discovered the Cure, a band he thought espoused "something unholy something alive and dead at the same time." He then returned to live with his father in the Beverlywood area of Los Angeles, where he attended Beverly Hills High School, branded himself as a goth, sold off his collection of metal records, and stopped following new music. He cited Nirvana as the last group he enjoyed before this point. In his view, grunge and alternative rock bands marked the end of the forward progress of popular music. "After that, my listening was totally retro. My mind was closing itself off from the rest of the planet."
Musical career
1996–2003: Early recordings
While in high school, Rosenberg began experimenting with songwriting and composing avant-garde pieces using a portable cassette recorder in his father's garage. His tools were limited to one bass guitar, an amp, and kitchen utensils. In 1996, he started what he later described as an eight-year-long "recording session" in which he "was very completely single-minded. I had tunnel vision. I was just completely like if my life depended on it." By then, he "was very into" krautrock, and in his songs, he endeavored to obfuscate his personality while using photos that bore minimal resemblance to him as album covers. He credited his tapes to a variety of names including "Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti" and "Ariel Rosenberg's Thrash and Burn". He did not intend to release any of this music.In 1997, Rosenberg entered the California Institute of the Arts studying fine art. He was dissatisfied that the school focused on "the art market" rather than "color theory or anything like that". He met John Maus at CalArts, and they subsequently became best friends and roommates. On one project, Rosenberg collaborated with fellow student and roommate Jeremy Albert Ringermacher, submitting a three-foot tall illustration, titled "The Last Art Piece", that realistically depicted the school's faculty, staff members, and students engaging in an orgy. The piece was allowed to be displayed, and in response, an administrative member unsuccessfully sued the university for sexual harassment.
His album The Doldrums was recorded during his final semester at the university. According to LA Weekly, he was then "in the throes of a drug binge". "I'm sure those were my words," he later said. "I don't know. It was fine. I had a typical art school experience, I suppose, if you consider getting drunk at openings, partying with your 'teachers,' and shrugging off scholastic duties as often as possible as something typical of college experience." He described the album as "the saddest record I could ; it was negative not only emotionally but aesthetically." The guitar parts were played with only three strings. For final examinations, he submitted a kiosk where he sold CDs of The Doldrums as a criticism against the school's marketing-oriented curriculum.
Rosenberg became a devout fan of the lo-fi musician R. Stevie Moore after listening to the compilation Everything and subsequently began collaborating with him. He first contacted Moore in early 1999 and mailed him a CD-R of The Doldrums. As Moore remembered, "I often received demos from taper nerds, but the Haunteds were from a surreal plane. Ariel started sending me so much material that it eventually became a big blur; I couldn't even totally wrap my head around his dozens of masterpieces." Pink recalled: "Signing on and seeing that my first email was from him was the most exciting thing to have happened in my life up to that point."
After dropping out of CalArts, Rosenberg lived in a Hindu ashram in Crenshaw, Los Angeles, where he "brought in heroin, smoked so much pot, blasted music, lived in filth, brought all these fucking weirdos in, played and recorded music all night, and never had a problem with those people." He also attended a music school and worked as a clerk at a record store. During this period, he recorded Scared Famous, Fast Forward, House Arrest, Lover Boy, and portions of Worn Copy. He envisioned working at a record store "for the rest of my life" before the Strokes "came out and all the sudden guitars came back . And then the White Stripes came out and I was like, 'Oh, shit.' I wasn't into any of that stuff, but I was like, 'Holy shit...Like in this lifetime...this is happening.
By the mid-2000s, Rosenberg had accumulated between 200 and 300 cassette tapes of material. In February 2004, his 16-year-old half-sister Elana suffered permanent brain damage and lost the use of her motor functions due to injuries sustained in a car accident. Asked in a 2012 interview how the experience affected him, he answered, "I have a hard time making music anymore. I listen to what I made ten years ago and it's like hearing a different person. I have no access to those impulses anymore." He stopped writing and recording music for the next several years.
2003–2009: Paw Traks albums and touring
In the summer of 2003, Rosenberg gave a CD-R of Worn Copy to the band Animal Collective after being introduced at one of their shows by a mutual friend, Beachwood Sparks drummer Jimi Hey. Unbeknownst to Rosenberg, Animal Collective had recently started their own record label, Paw Tracks. The band says in the reissued album's liner notes that it "sat on the floor of the van for a week or so One day, we noticed it and randomly threw it on and were immediately blown away. It was just like 'Woah, what is this!? We knew it could have only been made by this individual, and so made it our goal to officially release his records on our new label." Several weeks later they contacted him to sign him on Paw Tracks. Rather than Worn Copy, Rosenberg submitted what he believed to be his album with the least commercial potential, The Doldrums. The group initially rejected the album, but eventually warmed to it, and accepted it for release.October 2004's Paw Tracks release of The Doldrums was the first non-Animal Collective record the label issued and the first time his limited-edition home recordings were widely distributed. Only a small circle of his friends and family had heard his music before this point. Afterward, Pink's profile increased substantially. He embarked on concert tours to promote the releases. His original live performances consisted of himself singing over prerecorded tracks karaoke-style. When he became the opening act for Animal Collective in 2004, he decided to form a band. His performances were not well-received. He attributed that to his "not being very good" musician and to his recordings' not being meant to be performed live. "The dudes in my band don't get paid, so I can't really crack the whip and make them learn the songs. They just came along so they could travel." In 2005 and 2006, Paw Tracks reissued two of his previous recordings, Worn Copy and House Arrest, respectively. Altogether, the albums attracted a cult following for Pink.
Virtually all of Pink's music released in the 2000s was written and recorded before 2004. Instead of releasing new music, he spent the latter half of the decade touring and searching for another record label. Between 2006 and 2008, lesser-known labels issued four more albums, Underground, Lover Boy, and the compilations Scared Famous and Oddities Sodomies Vol. 1.
In 2006, Pink embarked on a few supporting tours and assembled a group backed with Jimi Hey, John Maus, Gary War, and girlfriend Geneva Jacuzzi. Musician and collaborator Cole M. Greif-Neill characterized Pink's reputation "on the L.A. scene" around this time as "the lame drug guy". In 2007, Pink and Maus backed Animal Collective's Panda Bear for his solo tour of Europe. In 2008, Pink established a more consistent touring band with keyboardist/guitarist/backing vocalist Kenny Gilmore, drummer/vocalist/guitarist Jimi Hey, and guitarist Cole M. Greif-Neill. Bassist Tim Koh found it "the most difficult music I've ever tried to play. Even something that sounds simple, like 'For Kate I Wait', took me months. I still don't have it exactly."
In later years, Rosenberg said the name "Ariel Pink" was not meant as a persona or pseudonym. The "common misconception," he said, started when promoters billed his early 2000s live shows as "Ariel Pink" fronting a band called the "Haunted Graffiti". He said: "There's no Ariel Pink My name's Ariel Rosenberg and I have a solo project that I called Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti. automatically people assumed that must be the 'Haunted Graffiti'." The original liner notes to these early albums, while credited to "Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti", also distinctly credit "Ariel Pink" with performing, recording, or writing the music. Pink was the only member of his band to appear on all four of his albums from the 2010s.