Thursday, March 15   8:30 p.m.
Central Presbyterian Church   (200 E 8th St)

Add this to your SXSW Calendar

  David Karsten Daniels - The Dream Before the Ring That Woke Me
Download   |   Stream

David Karsten Daniels is a songwriter from North Carolina with diverse musical experiences - among them, a childhood of hymn singing, a high school jazz band, and a formal university training in composition, theory, free improvisation, and performance art. For several years, David traveled throughout Texas and France recording quietly in small rooms, where his formal training began to give way to four-track experimentation, juxtaposing the phase pieces and improvisation of his academic life with lo-fi acoustic compositions. This itinerant approach to recording produced his first two albums ('The Mayflower' 2000; 'Out From Under Ligne 4', 2001) , which employ the use of whatever (non)instruments were at hand, such as dropped coins and pencil scratches in place of drum kits, or lyrics composed by rearranging the contents of the daily newspaper. David finished his studies and spent the subsequent year in Portland, Oregon, briefly experimenting with a laptop before moving to North Carolina with Daniel Hart and Alex Lazara to found the Bu_Hanan Collective. There, while giving his first two albums a wider release, he wrote and recorded the self-released album, 'Angles' (2004), as well as contributing to the records of the collective�s other bands.

Since then, David�s work has come increasingly into focus. Gone are the noise freakouts, drum programming, and obsessions with Steve Reich and John Cage. In their places are richly orchestrated songs in which his guitar and voice are the foundational elements fleshed out by up to 19 musicians and at least as many instruments. The result is the new and beautifully ambitious album, 'Sharp Teeth', which was sent to FatCat as a demo in June 2006, and will be released by us in early 2007. In the upcoming year, DKD and his band will be touring the U.S. and Europe in support the new release.