PRE-ORDER Dave King's Indelicate
US: Amazon CD
Canada: Amazon CD
[Listen to Dave King in the Nextplayer]
I had no clue [Dave King] was making an album. YES, THE Dave King, notorious drummer of [The Bad Plus]! But, get this, it's a SOLO album where he plays both drums and keys AT THE SAME TIME (to quote the amazing Rahzel). Justin and I had a listen and it's a very eclectic, heteroclite and, at times, abstract album (WHASSUP Y'ALL! You didn't think I knew that ish, did you!), but there's some really good tracks on there. Check out a FULL TRACK of the album, coming out on February 2nd, courtesy of Sunniside Records. And pre-order your copy RIGHT AWAY using the links at the top of the page!
Here's the official press release:
“Play the piano drunk like a percussion instrument until the fingers begin to bleed a bit.”
–Charles Bukowski
Jack DeJohnette and Joe Chambers are two jazz drum legends who’ve released records that featured their prowess on the drums and piano. Now, with the Sunnyside release of Indelicate, the Minneapolis-based drum wizard Dave King – a founding member of boundary-pushing trios The Bad Plus and Happy Apple – joins that impressive, albeit rarefied company. Only this time, the artist takes this sonic duality a step further, tackling both instruments on the same recording.
The album’s 12 tracks explore and extend the sonic and syncopated limits of a drum/piano combo, performed in this case by one incredible musician. On selections like “The Werewolf and the Silver Bullet,” the title track and “Bees,” King’s complex and concussive drum work – which situates itself between John Bonham and Tony Williams – lays the perfect platform for his Monkish keyboard clusters and rhythmic angles. “Homage: Young People” features an engaging melody punctuated by a driving pulse and found percussion, contrasted by the martial musings on “Highly Varnished Academic Realism,” the left-hand rumblings of “Arts High Boogie,” and the gospel-tinged “I Want to Feel Good.” The rest of the tracks highlight King’s exceptional and evocative solo piano moods, as evidenced by the autumnal, noir-nuanced and dissonant ballads, “I See You, You See Me,” “The Black Dial Tone of Night” and “The Great Hammer.”
Indelicate is as iconoclastic as King’s musical upbringing. Born on June 8, 1970, King grew up in Golden Valley, Minnesota. He listened to a wide variety of music and musicians, including Buddy Holly, John Coltrane, Led Zeppelin and Hank Snow. He started playing piano at age four and switched to drums in the fifth grade. He attended Cooper High School and the MacPhail Center for Music for five years, playing rock and jazz. He later moved to Los Angeles, where he worked as a studio musician, then returned to the Twin Cities in 1994, quickly emerging as a busy and influential figure on the area’s burgeoning new-jazz scene. As the drummer for intrepid trios The Bad Plus (with pianst Ethan Iverson and bassist Reid Anderson) and Happy Apple (with bassist Erik Fratzke and saxophonist Michael Lewis), he’s gone on to garner international acclaim for his inventive and uniquely emotive skills as both a drummer and a composer.
“For King, there’s no bourgeois or high-brow music, no elite school of rock, no exclusive church of jazz,” noted Mpls-St. Paul magazine. “King is about sound and making good music, not about making good jazz, good rock, or good electronica, though he makes all three.”