The music industry is undergoing a transition in market appeal that is rattling the cages of Sony, BMG and the other corporate giants to their core. Free downloads, YouTube music video availability and the dogged insistence on the part of studios and distributors to keep prices high have made CD sales plummet, virtually across the board. The one area that seems to be maintaining its customer enthusiasm is within the group of independent media companies that painstakingly selects their talent, keeps production prices reasonable and encourages performers to keep on the small- and medium-scale live performance track. One of the best independent labels we've come across in some time is the New York City-based Velour Recordings, and its most astonishing new talent is guitarist and vocalist Kaki King.
Born in Marietta, GA but currently living in Brooklyn, King was encouraged by her father to take up music, and drums were her first love. Thankfully for us, she also began pickin', and after years of playing on the street corners of New York (where she attended college) and busking on subway platforms, King landed a deal to produce the CD Everybody Loves You in 2003, followed the next year by Legs to Make Us Longer and 2006's Until We Felt Red. The albums trace a course of development that begins with simple, elegant, almost classically delicate guitar melodies that float across the ears, to more emphatic use of the guitar as a percussion instrument (King slaps and bass-thumps the guitar frequently) and finally to the fusion of rock and acoustic playing in a style like no other. A mere whip of a woman, at 25 and all of 5'1", King's playing power utterly belies her stature, and from the almost mist-like whisper of the ballad "ahuvati" to the strolling contemplation of "Carmine Street," her songs don't dictate as much as suggest moods; they wrap around you but keep you breathing...and offer a hugely encouraging counterpoint to the jiggling, pop bubblegum nonsense that-if we didn't hope and now know better-we'd imagine to be the only music coming out young performers' heads these days.
