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THE REVIEW
Advice from the latest de-registered user: listen to the underDerecensito, hopefully dignified, album with eyes closed and without distractions (as any album should be listened to the first time).
The artist I am about to introduce, and whom some of you should already know, is a young girl with undeniable talent. I met her at a recent musical "meeting" (and met is the right word since there were about 10 of us), and we talked for about an hour. The girl knows her stuff and that is undeniable. She holds a hyper-amplified blue Ovation, and the nails on her right hand are impressively long. She's about one meter fifty tall, more or less like the guitar itself. We all sit down, and Kaki starts tuning. Quick as a hawk, she swoops on the strings, simultaneously and rapidly tapping to perform the first three songs of the album that made her known to the critics.
Kewpie Station is a tribal beat and scratches on the strings, beats and rebeats on the body. Steamed Juicy Little Bun is a melodic little ballad, repeated but never the same, gently passing quickly over the strings, creating bridges of unimaginable wonder and dreamlike bucolic, never canonical, valleys, to then return back, in the warmth of our home. Carmine St. is a hysterical calm, rapidly tapped as if on a virtual keyboard rather than on a classical guitar, the drum's impervious surface is not what it seems, it's the nails carving grooves on the body, a synth in the background like a cat scratching at the home door, but in reality, it's the nail performing concentric scraping loops to then explode back on the strings.
Does finger tapping create melodies? What if we did it with both hands simultaneously? Parallelisms that create the structure of a song, even though it’s all instrumental; Close your eyes and you'll burst into flames. It is a fast sound and the melodies are grasped mid-air, a scratch here, a hammer there...
Everybody Loves You, which gives the album its title, is a scale of unheard verticality.
Playing for some time in the New York subway has given Kaki the strength of survival. Playing in a Tap Bar has given her the grit and energy to make distracted people hear her ramblings.
Kaki doesn't even know what sheet music looks like. She can neither read nor write music. She doesn't remember most of the songs, she only knows "more or less how they go."
I wrote this review while listening to Kaki. I didn't write it down on a piece of paper first; I wanted it to come out "more or less" as I imagined it.
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Summary by Bot
This review celebrates Kaki King's 'Everybody Loves You' as a remarkable instrumental album defined by her extraordinary finger-tapping guitar technique. The reviewer vividly describes the intimate listening experience and Kaki's raw talent, shaped by her performances in New York. The album is praised for its inventive melodies and captivating, nontraditional guitar sounds, all created without reading sheet music. Overall, the album impresses with its unique and genuine musical expression.Tracklist Lyrics
Kaki King
Kaki King is an American guitarist and composer from Atlanta known for percussive fingerstyle, two‑hand tapping, and open tunings. She debuted with Everybody Loves You (2003), broke wider with Legs to Make Us Longer (2004), contributed music to Sean Penn’s Into the Wild, and has continued releasing innovative projects including Glow, The Neck Is a Bridge to the Body, and Modern Yesterdays.07 Reviews
Other reviews
By Titz
Once she picked up the functioning guitar, the Atlanta guitarist and her band transported you into an hour and a half of pure magic.
Five minutes of absolute silence from the audience that erupted into a roar of applause and shouts at the last note.
