K Bay (2LP)

K Bay, Matthew E. White’s first album in six years, is the astounding record he has forever aspired to make. Recorded at and titled in homage to White’s home studio Kensington Bay on Richmond’s Kensington Avenue, the studio offers a spiritually separate space for his personal music practice and artistic risk-taking away from Spacebomb, the production house and label he founded.

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A bold reclamation of independence and identity, K Bay establishes White as one of his era’s most imaginative and audacious songwriters, composers, and bandleaders. These 11 pieces are retro-futurist magic tricks that feel instantly classic and contemporary, the product of a musical mind that has internalized the lessons of his idols and used them to build a brilliant world of his own.

You will immediately recognize White here, singing softly of his big-hearted cosmography of love and wisdom and botanical metaphors; you will be stunned, though, by the dazzling density and relentless wonder of his ideas, from the swaggering hooks of “Electric” and “Let’s Ball” to the fragmented symphonic sway of “Fell Like An Ax.”

K Bay moves with the absolute freedom and force of a debut thrillride; it exudes the sophistication and subtlety of a revivified veteran who knows exactly what he wants to hear and just how to get it.

Written and produced by Matthew E. White, K Bay was mixed and engineered by Adrian Olsen with orchestral arrangements by Trey Pollard. On the album, White is joined by the exceptional Spacebomb house band alongside over 30 other talented musicians.