The Tumblr blog Noise Park has, for some reason, become an incredibly soothing internet presence for me over the past few weeks. The conceit is simple: musicians who work in the avant, represented as if they were guest stars on South Park.
Jeremy Earl
It's just classic slapstick internet humor: two extremely disparate elements combined into one. Yet as the site becomes a regular who's who of the #noiselife scene, I have to consider why it's so comforting. Is it because, to a certain extent, these are memes I know?
Id M Theft Able
There are a few specific reasons why knowing the meme you love makes all the difference in this case. For one, the accurateness of the depictions, even in South Park style, is dead-on and hilarious. The anonymous generator of these posts is either very proficient at using the South Park Avatar Creator or is perhaps one of the animators of the show itself – very specific details of a musician's entity are transcribed, like their stoned-ness, hyperactivity, loopiness, or specific odd hair-style.
Daniel Higgs
But the real reason that it's so gratifying is that in weird, subterranean music scenes, it's all about community. Caricatures of famous people are just Wall Street Journal editorial cartoons, but when it's people that you've seen play their inner heart out in someone's living room or basement, it becomes a touch more personal. When we look at Noise Park, we are all just buddies, getting our pictures drawn on the Coney Island Boardwalk.
Brian Chippendale
