Karin Park interview: ‘EVO’, evolution and the cost of becoming

Swedish-Norwegian artist Karin Park released her EP “EVO” on 8 May 2026, the first part of a three-part cycle she calls “EVO-LUT-ION-(EN)”. In this Karin Park interview for Side-Line Magazine, she speaks with Karo Kratochwil about that record and the ideas behind it: evolution as a costly process, motherhood surfacing in the songs without sentiment, the anger she found inside “Explodera”, the everyday field recordings and pump organ woven through the tracks, her parallel work with the band Årabrot, and the pull of the painter Hilma af Klint.

Kratochwil first saw Park perform as part of Lustmord at the 2024 Wrocław Industrial Festival, the encounter that shaped this conversation. The two spoke over Zoom between family duties, Park waiting outside her daughter’s circus camp, a setting that sits deliberately against the record’s themes of transformation, darkness and spiritual pressure.

Karin Park interview

Karo: Now that “EVO” is out in the world, do you feel more understood, more exposed, or more misunderstood?

Karin: Good question. I really have not thought about that at all. When I think about it, I do feel more understood, because it was a while ago since I released my last thing, and I am very much in that musical place of this EP.

I feel like I get to show where I am right now, which is important, because when I come and play live, I feel people do not know exactly what to expect from me. I have done a lot of different kinds of live shows, but now with this live show I have incorporated my whole musical history in a more danceable way, because that is kind of where I am with myself right now.

More than anything, when I play live now, people get to understand where I am in my life right now. There was a period where I had really small children, I was super tired, and everything I did in the studio was super slow. But now I have a lot more energy and the live show is a lot more energetic. So I do feel, with the EP and the live show combined, that I get to show where I am right now.

Therefore, I feel more understood. But it is not an easy thing to understand me as an artist, because I am so many things, and people want to put you into different boxes: “Oh, she is like that,” or “she is like that.” I play loads of different instruments. I have so many different interests, musically and in art and different things. So I do not think it is an easy task to try to understand. But over a long period of time, when you look back on my career, it is going to be easier to see where it was. When you get it just piece by piece, it is harder.

Karo: Did any reaction surprise you?

Karin: It always surprises me when people who loved my first album also love my last thing, because I have done this for like 20 years now, and my first record was quite different from what I am releasing now. But people still like my records. The same people like my records. And I find that quite amazing, that people kind of grow with me in that sense. That always surprises me a little bit: people who have been following me through my whole journey and have not fallen off at some record.

Maybe it is less different than I would like to think, because I am the same person after all. But other than that, no, I am not too surprised.

Karo: You have spoken about needing a frame for this project. Once that frame becomes public, does it still give freedom, or can it start becoming something like a cage?

Karin: I think that I do not care enough about where people want me to be. I cared a bit more when I was younger. I did a pretty big turn from my first and second album into a more electronic vibe, and I think that was my biggest change. But now, when I make music, I cannot make anything that I do not like. I am very bad at doing things that I do not like doing. So I do not think I could make music just to please someone else. I have tried, because I have tried to please people so many times, but I just do not know how to do it.

For some people, they have always stuck to their guns and chosen to be really different. But for me, ever since school, I moved to Japan when I was a kid, and when I came home from Japan, I was like a different person from everyone else. I tried my hardest to fit in. I would do anything to fit in, but I realized quickly that I just had no idea how to fit in, so I was going to have to go the other way. It was not really a choice for me. That is kind of what I have done my whole music career. I have no idea how to fit in, so I might as well just do my own thing until I die.

Karo: So what is the drive for you?

Karin: The drive for me is to create. When I create something, it does not matter if it is music, or if it is a little short film, or if it is something I am building in my home. I just love the action of: there is nothing there now, and then suddenly there is something there. The most amazing thing with music is that there is nothing there, and suddenly there is something out of thin air. It does not even take any space.

Where there was silence, there is now music. I think that is such an incredible thing. It amazes me every day when I am in the studio. I made this. How cool is that? And also on stage. I love, love, love being on stage. When I am singing, when I am doing my thing, when I play my synthesizers live in front of people, it is like I am truly the person I want to be. I do not think about anything else. I am totally in the moment. So those are the two things. That is why I get up every day. I love doing that.

Karo: You seem to be working from a very immediate place now. Do you trust your first instincts more now than before as an artist?

Karin: Yes, I think I do. I think I have learned to. When I start something, when I start a song, there is always a mental choir that goes: “Boo, boo, stop doing this.” In my head, it is like a very critical ensemble of mental ghosts that are always criticizing what I do: “Oh no, not that chord again,” “We have heard this before.” Things that you tell yourself. But I have learned that if I can just quiet those mental ghosts for a while and get on with my thing, then suddenly I get sucked into the project. Before, maybe I would stop doing something and listen to those voices.

But now I know that is just a mental thing that a lot of people have, and that I have, and that I just have to deal with it. If I can just quiet those inner critical voices, then I can get to something good. I trust more now that I will get over myself and get sucked into the song.

Karo: Motherhood appears on “EVO”, but not in a soft or decorative way. It feels loving, pressured, exhausted, protective, and sometimes almost violent. Did you want to resist the clean story people often expect around motherhood?

Karin: I did not think that I was even writing about motherhood. I think that I wrote the songs, and then I realized what they were about after I had written them. Sometimes I try: “Oh, I want to write about this.” But then when I make the song, it does not want to be about that. The creative process is put down brick by brick, and then I am like: “Oh, this song became a song about motherhood.” With the song “Explodera,” I did not even know what it was about when it was finished. I was like: “What is this song? I do not even recognize what it is about.”

But then, when I was making the video for it, I was in the process of doing a script for the video, and I was like: “How can I make a script for the video when I do not know what it is about?” Then I saw “Raging Bull” by Martin Scorsese, and I was like: “Oh my God, this song is rage. I am angry.” When I listened to the lyrics with that in mind, it was so obvious, but it is almost like you cannot see the forest for all the trees. Sometimes I just write the lyrics that I feel should be in the song. When I try to write a lyric to a song and it is not right, sometimes I just scrap it entirely. Or if I want to write about a subject and there is resistance, it just does not happen. Then I am like: “Okay, it does not want to be about this. So what do you want to be about then? Show me.” Then I write word by word.

Sometimes I write it backwards. I write the end part first, and then I go back and feel my way into what the song wants to be about. In the end, it makes more and more sense. By the end of it, it is like: “Okay, there it is.” I always write the melody first, and parts of the music. I almost never start with the lyric. Maybe just a line or something, but most of the time I let the melody decide what the song is going to be about. Sometimes it is stuff that I do not even want to write about, but I do not have a choice, because this song is about this and there is nothing I can do.

Karo: With “Explodera,” you recognized anger and frustration underneath what first felt like a love song. Do you think anger sometimes tells the truth before the conscious mind does?

Karin: I think the unconscious mind tells the truth all the time, and that is kind of where you dip in when you write lyrics. Does it feel true or not? The unconscious mind is always right.

Karo: The use of your children’s voices is powerful because family enters the record physically, not only lyrically. What was the role of those samples for you?

Karin: I just have a lot of samples that I had recorded on my phone, and there are a lot of different samples. I use samples of my everyday life all the time. It was not like: “Oh, now I am putting my sacred son’s sample in here.” It was more like: “Oh my God, it would sound great if my son was laughing in that little gap,” or: “I heard this thing on the radio and I recorded it, can we just put it in here?” It is more about the use of different sounds. I actually do not think too much about whether it is my children. It just sounded nice. It is not any more sacred than that, really. Sometimes a horse is neighing, or loads of different things. I have gone through like 700 recordings on my phone of different sounds.

Karo: So there are traces of everyday life, church space, hymns, pump organ, electronics and darker club textures?

Karin: So many things. It is more like: I was at this party, and my uncle and his friends came in and they were playing the violin, and I was like: “This sounds amazing, let us put that into a song.” When my father’s ashes were buried, we sang this hymn in church, and I recorded that. That is also a texture. There are lots of different things that people do not really hear, but they are from my life in different settings. Or if I do the dishes and the glasses touch each other and it sounds cool, then I just record it and use that in the song.

Karo: What about the pump organ? Does it bring memory, faith, architecture, or is it simply one more sound from your life?

Karin: No, they sound really special. They really do. Especially when you mix them with more electronic music, they have a different soul. I also play the flute, and when I play the flute, it sounds so warm and so human. Sometimes in an electronic track, if I use the flute, it is just a texture and you do not hear what it is, but you feel something. It is almost like someone reaches out and touches you, because it is so human. I feel that with the pump organ too. It is such an organic sound. It brings a whole different texture of organic feeling to the sound, which I love.

Karo: Your melodies can be very beautiful, but this beauty rarely feels innocent. Do you trust beauty more when it carries a wound?

Karin: Yes. I think I am very drawn to the darker side of beauty somehow. Always. I do not know why, but it is just the way it is. My first record sounds more innocent, I guess, but I was also the same then, to be honest. It was just that I tried to make a song. I was not in a grown-up enough state so that I could ask myself: “What do I really like? What kind of melodies?” I was just like: “Can I write the song? Okay. This is a song that I could hear on the radio.” That was kind of just my attempt to write actual songs. But now, when I feel: “How do I get touched?” If I hear a melody and I am going: “Oh, that is so beautiful,” then I can trust that more.

Because I know now that I can write a song. It is no problem. It is just: what kind of song do I want to write? I have developed more, but I have always been drawn to the darker side of the melody. I think that is something that runs in my family too. I grew up in church, but when I listen to what kind of music my family made, the hymns, and my grandmother’s uncle, who used to write a lot of the stuff and was the organist in the church that I grew up in, his melodies are so melancholic. There is a more folky touch to it because he wrote folk music, but it is still so dark and beautiful in a way. I just think that runs in my DNA somehow.

Karo: You have both the solo work and Årabrot, and they seem separate but connected. Are those worlds still clearly divided, or has the border between them become useful because it leaks?

Karin: I think it has become very useful. The big difference between Årabrot and my solo project is that in Årabrot, Kjetil writes all the music. I do not write anything. He is always 30 songs ahead of me. He writes every day. The creative process in Årabrot for me is to arrange the songs and to produce them. So it has a lot of influence from my production over the years. We obviously work together and talk every day, so we have a lot of influence on each other. We are very different, but we have a lot in common as well.

I was a small part of what I wrote for many years, but when we decided to kind of front the band, both of us, it became more useful, because I could take a bit more space there and find my own personality in the band. Now I feel like it is two different sides of me that I get to show. I feel like they complement each other in a good way. When I am with Årabrot, I get to be the second opinion a bit. I can look at it from an angle. It is not all about inside of me all the time. I can look at Kjetil’s songs with a bit more distance. It is also nice to be able to rock out when I am in Årabrot. I can crowd surf, I can play bass, and focus more on the production side of things and the live part of things. I do not have to put all my personality in it at all times, which is kind of nice.

Karo: Evolution sounds beautiful as a word, but real evolution usually costs something. What has this current evolution cost you?

Karin: I think I am too close to it now to know that. But I think it cost a lot. It always does. To evolve is my trademark. I feel like my whole life is kind of a quick evolution, and it does cost a lot to do that, but you also gain a lot. I think I will see it more clearly once these three parts are out. But it takes everything. It takes all the energy out of me to do and release all of this. I do not think people who are not artists can understand how much we put into it. It is everything. Everything. I feel like it costs a lot, but it gives you a lot too. Sometimes I wish I would just not be interested in being an artist anymore, because I think it would be an easier life. It takes so much: the passion, how personal it is. I do not think music is necessarily that personal for everyone, but for me it really is.

I do not know how to describe it, but sometimes it feels like it destroys you. It burns a hole inside of you when you give this much. But on a good day, it feels cathartic also, to be able to do that. And as you said, you mentioned that I create in a very immediate way, and I have not really thought about that. But I am going to be grateful for that, because I do. I take it for granted sometimes, but I should not, because I am very lucky that way. I can create exactly what I want. I do not have to take any expectations into consideration. I just release exactly the kind of songs that I want to release, and I have the power to do so. That is great. But sometimes to have all of that freedom is also daunting.

Karo: Is this trilogy about becoming someone new, or becoming less afraid of who you already are?

Karin: I think in many ways the journey is to be closer to who you really are. As close to who you really are as possible. I think that is the quest in life: to really allow yourself to become that person that you want to be. I do not want to become someone new, but I want to be closer to the person that I am. Sometimes I am in touch with that person, but not always. That is what I want. Sometimes I want to get closer to myself, and I want to remind other people of who they are as well. I feel like music can do that.

Sometimes you go for a long time and you feel like you have forgotten who you are. Then suddenly you get a glimpse of the real you, and then you remember. Especially when you get older, you can lose yourself. When you are a child, you know who you are, and then you get distracted. There are so many things in life that try to distract us from who we really are. That is the journey that we all are on in a way. And because “EVO” is inspired by Hilma af Klint, she was on a spiritual journey to also reach her higher self, which I can relate to.

About Karin Park

Karin Park was born on 6 September 1978 in Djura, Sweden, and began her career in Bergen, Norway. She works as a singer, songwriter, producer and multi-instrumentalist whose music moves between synthpop, electronic and darker, industrial-leaning pop. Her early full-lengths “Superworldunknown” (2003), “Change Your Mind” (2006) and “Ashes to Gold” (2009) preceded the shift toward electronics that defined “Highwire Poetry” (2012) and “Apocalypse Pop” (2015), both on State of the Eye Recordings. She also wrote “I Feed You My Love”, Norway’s 2013 Eurovision entry performed by Margaret Berger.

Later work moved toward sparser, more personal settings: “Church of Imagination” (2020) on her own Djura Missionshus, and “Private Collection” (2022) on Pelagic Records, which paired her voice with minimal pump-organ arrangements. In 2021 she released the collaborative album “Alter” with Lustmord, also on Pelagic, and performed the project live, including at the 2024 Wrocław Industrial Festival. Park is married to Kjetil Nernes of the Norwegian band Årabrot, where she plays keyboards and co-produces; as she describes above, Nernes writes the music while she arranges and produces it.

Park last spoke with Side-Line in March 2026, in an earlier interview about touring small and intimate venues. Her EP “EVO” arrived on 8 May 2026, trailed by the singles “Sing Your Sorrow” and “Explodera”, the latter released with a video. “EVO” opens the “EVO-LUT-ION-(EN)” cycle discussed in this interview, a set she frames as three parts still to be completed.