Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti

Ariel Marcus Rosenberg ( AR-ee-el; born June 24, 1978), also known as Ariel Pink, is an American multi-instrumentalist, singer, and songwriter whose music draws heavily from 1970s–1980s pop radio and cassette culture. His lo-fi aesthetic and home-recorded albums proved influential to many indie artists in the late 2000s, and he is frequently cited as "godfather" of the hypnagogic pop and chillwave movements. The majority of his recorded output stems from a prolific eight-year period (1996–2003) in which he accumulated over 200 cassette tapes of material. A native of Los Angeles, Rosenberg 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. In 2004, he debuted on Animal Collective's Paw Tracks label with a string of albums he had originally self-released, beginning with The Doldrums (2000). He found wider exposure following the release of Before Today (2010), which was featured on numerous "best of 2010" lists. Until 2014, his records were usually credited to "Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti", a solo project sometimes conflated with his touring band.