- News - Concerti - Biografia - Discografia - Recensioni - Foto - Video - Chitarre - Shop - Links - Email Nobody's Freak Fairfield County Weekly, 18th March 2004 Twenty four-year-old instrumental guitarist kaki King wants the world to focus on her music, not her nifty playing techniques. By Brita Brundage Kaki King talks with the snide disinterest of one already jaded by a lifetime of fame. Outside musician circles the 24-year-old acoustic guitarist and composer is more critic darling than household name, and she's clearly sick of answering questions about her "innovative technique". When asked to describe the various ways she makes her Ovation sing, King answers: "Well, I stand on my head, I pick up the guitar with my feet and play with my nose-hairs. I don't know, it's kind of likethe more I talk about the technique the more retarded it sound. So it's just like, for me, it's almost 90 percent traditional finger-style guitar playing. Then there's a little bit of using the body of the guitar as a drum, which really isn't that snazzy, either. What impresses people are those moments of flair when King uses both hands to play bass and high-fret-taps on the neck of the guitar or slaps out a percussive backbeat while still finger-picking the melody. But, for her, such technique is just a means to an end and it's the end - the music - that counts.

Her 2003 album, Everybody Loves You recorded at friends' studios beginning in 2000 when king attended New York University - is full of striking-moments. These songs are complete compositions that don't overstay their welcome. they suggest and retreat with equal part delicacy and force. On 2steamed juicy little bun" a bass line collapses and pauses for quick jazz progressions, alternating deftly, one chasing the other's tail. A darker melody on "carmine st." evokes a windy, rainy space between buildings, someone walking slowly down an alley with lots on their mind. Eventually the slap is added and therecomes a sound of a slow scratch down a string (the sound, almost of a car rushing past), without breaking the mesmerizing effect. She wear thick acrilic nailson her picking hand which provide the rich, full sound and impede only a little on the oercussive tapping; she alsp play in a variety of alternate tunnings. But, mostly, it's the finger-picking one hears. On "the exhibition", her lulling strings are almost trance-inducing. Kaki King may have begun playing drums in punk and Brit-pop bands and adding lead guitar instrumentals to singer-songwriter 's tunes, but she's emerged as an emotional instrumentalist. musician whose songs are both beautiful and sad. she developed her skills playing in the New York subway and found ways to let songs lead her,playing any way she could find to create the sound she wanted. ......................................................................................................... Copyright © 2006 Mechanism Records All Rights Reserved