King Ropes - The Unknown

Dave Hollier, King Ropes’ songwriter and singer, has always had eclectic tastes in music, and the bands’ songs reflect this. There is no attempt made to squeeze into one particular corner of the musical universe. We say something like “..perching uneasily between indie, desert rock, and ragged americana”, or “Ramshackle Psychedelic Americana Noise Pop.”

“We love puzzling out how to make music that sounds pretty different from song to song, yet still hangs together in a way that people hear it and know it’s us.” Over 10 years and 7 albums King Ropes’ music has been constantly shifting, searching, working its way across unsteady ground. This album, The Unknown, feels like a continuation of that evolution, but more like an arrival than another departure. There’s a palpable feeling of these songs, these recordings, being what this band has been working toward. There’s a focus along with a sense of ease that holds these eclectic pieces together to make a larger whole.

Recorded at The Unknown, in Anacortes, WA, a studio in a former church, the album has the warm human feel of 5 people in a room playing together and recording on old analog gear; because that’s what it is.

King Ropes is based in Bozeman, MT, sort of, but you know, life is complicated, and we Americans are transient. A lot of the band lives in Seattle lately. But the lineup is fluid, depending on who’s available to record or tour or whatever we’re doing. There’ve been moments over the last 10 yrs where we’ve had a whole group of people who live in Bozeman, but it’s always been fleeting.