As the leader of Athens band Kenosha Kid, guitarist Dan Nettles has spent well over a decade exploring the cosmic intersection of jazz, post-rock, jam and improv composition. Despite the headiness of Nettles and crew’s approach, the results are eminently approachable and frequently thrilling, as on last year’s smoky, funky Outside Choices.
Kenosha Kid is set to return with another full-length, Missing Pieces, scheduled for a February 2019 release and featuring the core lineup of Nettles, bassist Robbie Handley, guitarist Rick Lollar and drummer Marlon Patton, plus other contributors, including Cicada Rhythm’s Andrea DeMarcus.
We’re jazzed (*sorrynotsorry*) to give you a first taste of the new LP in the form of debut single and video “04 How Would It All Fit?”, a mysterious and inquisitive tune that calls to mind Chicago post-everything icons Tortoise in its cool complexity.
The process of building the piece was typically elaborate, as Nettles explains:
The seed of this song is an ostinato on the note “D” that I repeated in what seemed to be a mysterious rhythm. With repetition, I deciphered the pattern to be a morse-code-like figure: two eighths one quarter, eighth quarter, eighth quarter, eight quarter, two eighths one quarter. About the time I programmed a drum beat to reflect this, I began to hear the “D” as the major third of the B-flat chord, and I was off and running, in the end generating all the harmony of the song. It was an interesting figure to strum on the guitar, for sure. The melody is a repeated phrase, leaping again in sixths through the B-flat scale with small embellishments.
“For this recording,” Nettles adds, “Marlon [Patton] is actually clanging a discarded bathroom vent fan vent cover back and forth with one hand while playing drums. The vent cover’s lopsided accents bring out the ostinato.”
Check out the video below:
Missing Pieces pre-sales start Saturday, Dec. 15 on Kenosha Kid’s Bandcamp page.
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