Mark King
Influences

"Influences" is a 1984 album, produced, written, and played almost entirely solo by Level 42's bassist and leader Mark King. If anyone associates his name with "Lessons in Love" and "Running in the Family," they should quickly forget about it. "Influences" has nothing to do with '80s pop.

The album consists of just 5 tracks. The first one is titled "The Essential," an 18-minute suite. A bit pretentious, really, where rock and funk atmospheres alternate with somewhat cerebral, baroque parts, and consequently, in this context, choirs with a vague '70s flavor, bells, and percussion echoing the noise of train level crossings and indistinct loudspeaker voices that seem to come from afar. The most interesting part of the track is definitely the middle and ending, where Mark, after a slow and intimate bass solo, sketches out with a wind orchestra a broad funky style, with an atmosphere that seems rooted in Latin music—essentially a true salsa. At the end of this passage, Mark King launches into a lightning-fast slap, one of those that have defined his figure as a musician, with the bass sounding like a machine gun. The second half of the album is definitely more accessible with the tracks "Clocks Go Forward," a well-crafted slow piece with offbeat drumming, "Pictures on the Wall," cheerful but not relying on predictable verses and choruses, "I Feel Free," a cover of the famous Cream song, and concluding with "There is a Dog," probably the album's highest moment. The track has clear South American ethnic origins, between Brazilian samba and Caribbean rhythms. The singing is onomatopoeic, reminiscent of the Brazilian language. Extremely beautiful are the keyboard solos and the percussion counterpoints, which are also amazing as they were played by him, proving how great this musician is, whom I will never tire of saying is too underrated. In short, the album is the sum of all the influences of Mark King, the music he listened to but was never freely allowed to play due to the '80s musical landscape. The regret is that "Influences" was only a parenthesis in his career and never followed up.