The NYC-via-San Diego songwriter announces his debut self-titled EP with a track preserved from his teenage years.

There is a specific texture to teenage creativity that is almost impossible to manufacture in a professional studio: unpolished, raw edge that captures the feeling of the room it was born in. For Ken Park (the recording moniker of Liam Creamer), that texture is like a document.

Today, we are premiering ‘Sleep Paralysis,’ the lead single from Ken Park’s upcoming self-titled EP (out February 26th via TODO). While the track serves as the introduction to Creamer’s current chapter in New York City, its roots are much older. Written and recorded when Creamer was just 17 years old, the track was captured entirely on an iPhone. Rather than re-recording it with his current setup, Creamer chose to leave the artifact intact. The result is a piece of chilling freak-folk caught on tape.

“Sleep paralysis is a state where the mind wakes before the body—where you’re aware of your own vulnerability but powerless to act,” he explains. “It’s something many of us experience at some point, and this song became my way of giving voice to that feeling of being stuck: wanting something intensely while knowing it remains frustratingly, persistently just out of reach.”

It is sparse and spectral, utilizing the natural hiss and compression of the phone microphone to create a sense of claustrophobia. It sits in stark contrast to the rest of the upcoming EP, which spans a six-year creative coming-of-age journey.

While ‘Sleep Paralysis’ offers a glimpse into the project’s intimate origins, the full EP promises a erratic, engaging map of Creamer’s musical evolution. Moving from the sun-bleached harmonies of his San Diego upbringing to the jagged, Slint-inspired percussion of his recent Brooklyn sessions (heard on the “caustic” closer ‘Dragonfly’), the record is a travelogue of an artist finding his footing.