blog post Longwalkshortdock: Hell, hair and high expectations

"I want someone who grabs my soul and sets my heart on fire." Longwalkshortdock, "High Expectations," Casual Tea

When you see Longwalkshortdock perform, it's easy to get wrapped up in the ecstasy and exuberance of the moment. Vancouver transplant Dave King’s curly mane explodes around his lanky frame as he flails, headbangs and rocks out, his grin sneaking out and stretching the outlines of his stern but mirthful goatee.

Not only is King a joy to watch, his beats are unerringly raunchy, gnarly, techy and quirky, and his recent collaboration with Rim Visuals has culminated in a fully immersive concert experience.

King jokes that he fights his "invisible personal demons through interpretive live techno" while onstage, and only he can see them. Yet there is some truth in that comment. His spastic movements and mixture of heartfelt falsetto and guttural PA wailing seem akin to a form of emotional exorcism, and his albums are a continuation of that catharsis.
 
Growing up in Calgary, King's parents bought him a digital piano and lessons. Unfortunately, he was uninspired by his strictly traditionalist teacher, so instead of diligently practising, he used the ‘record” function on the piano to replay previous practice sessions for his parent's benefit. This freed up some extra video-game time for the young man, exposing him to high levels of 8- and 16-bit electronic music. While King never completed his classical training, his fondness for electronic music remained strong.

Seemingly driven by the will to survive, Longwalkshortdock is a beast onstage. Seeing him live is his most powerful fan-base recruiting device. He has a monolithic rig, often cheated to an angle to allow him maximum flail space, on which he launches and tweaks his effects processors, synths and a MacBook running Ableton.

But King is a showman above all else. He's gone so far as to allow a member of the audience to cut his hair off after a good set and has performed wearing a spacesuit before leading the crowd in the metaphoric launching of a spaceship via magic sparklers.

Longwalkshortdock's set at the Soundwave Music Festival in 2009, one of the rare sparkler nights, was a turning point in King's career. Not only was the set one of his highest hyped, it also served as the early album release party for his debut Casual Tea.

One can see King winking in the wordplay of the name Casual Tea and on tracks like "I Will Kill You With Techno" and "I'm So Bad I Make Medicine Sick," but the album was written in the aftermath of a relationship breakup. Roughly half the tracks are about that loss, a few are silly fun, and the rest are about the struggle to move forward. Bigger Fish Frying was released on East Van Digital halfway through 2011, showing King's growing confidence in his methods and messages.

Listen to Longwalkshortdock on CBC Music:

listen

Watch this clip from LWSD's set at Shambhala 2011. 

And listen for him on the CBC Electronic Shambhala preview podcast.