Genre-bending percussionist Deantoni Parks is drum-rolling into the Dr. Phillips
Center’s Judson’s Live on Thursday, May 22. His boundary-pushing project Technoself will fill the concert hall with bleeding-edge beats accompanied by compelling light and video projections.
Parks describes his sound as “avant-garde and futuristic, with a bit of funk.” His CV of collaborations shows just how eclectic Parks is, including artists like Mars Volta, André 3000, John Cale from the Velvet Underground and even Rockstar Games for “Grand Theft Auto V.” He released his ninth body of work, OBSERVERS, in late April, including several songs that feature vocalist Hanna Benn. Parks’ approach to his craft is unorthodox, meant to keep both him and the audience on their toes.
“I think [Technoself] is something people have not heard or seen before,” Parks says. “They’re going to be experiencing a true quantum experiment where I actually don’t know what I’m going to hear until it happens.”
With each cymballic interaction and experience, Parks has found that the subconscious is the key that unlocks his creativity. Parks says he approaches a performance with a “plan to be in the flow and to find my flow.” Parks explains, further, his “flow” and his subconscious go hand-in-hand. According to Parks, they work together to create the entire show.
“It is a ride because I’m really searching for essentially new ways to create, and I’m doing that by focusing more on my subconscious and getting in the flow. I’m using less of my frontal lobe and more of everything else,” Parks says. “I’m literally using all the subconscious data from my life. We’re talking a few decades of data that I have to pull from. It seems like the music is just streaming, but it’s really not because I’m reevaluating years of data within the time of a thought while onstage.”
Parks, as Technoself, isn’t just a jack-of-all-genres: He’s a jack-of-all-disciplines.
Over his 20 years in music, Parks has learned from the best, worked with the best and even created a school to teach some of the best of music’s future.
Very much marching to the beat of his own drum, Parks has been playing the instrument since he was a toddler — banging away on a DIY drum kit made of pots and pans from his grandma’s kitchen cabinets. Parks proceeded to practice his passion all the way to Berklee College of Music, where he became curious about production and earned a Bachelor of Arts.
“My time at Berklee was extremely important, because that was my time to really expand my creative system,” Parks says.
Parks traded his pots and pans for books and pencils that helped mold his current performance style. As a percussionist, drums are his main instrument, but his schooling at Berklee introduced him to production techniques that elevated his rhythms. He uses a “stripped-down drum kit” that consists of a snare drum, a kick drum, a hi-hat cymbal and a small MIDI controller as the foundations of his hybrid sound.
Parks’ creative visions expanded into providing musical education to anyone who is interested. In 2020, Parks created the Technoself School of Philosophy, where he has mentored hundreds of participants in their own instrumental journeys. He says the school is completely online, and serves as a community for like-minded individuals looking to expand their knowledge of music.
“I’m a big supporter of each of our inner selves, and the things that we have embedded within us that we don’t even know,” Parks says. “The curriculum is about each participant bringing out these different aspects, so they’re all having a different curriculum experience while receiving the same information.”
And school is very much in session on Thursday.
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This article appears in May 14-20, 2025.