Live Review: Kaki King, Salta

New York guitar composer Kaki King is back in the country doing a new round of shows in support of her recent release, Glow, her sixth LP and her fourth under founding label Velour. King has returned to the roots of her career, performing solo an almost entirely instrumental set.

Joining her was local troupe Salta, performing a lovely set of delicate folk songs built around traditional two and three-part harmonies that were pushed along by gentle folk melodies. Ryan Brennan's fine guitar work rippled underneath the gossamer vocals of Julia Jacklin and Liz Hughes, while the grace and clarity of Rosie McKay's bass anchored the performance. It was a beautiful set and well received.

King's set was a sensational display of guitar composition and dexterity. She is a prodigious talent and her work is full of complex scale progressions and dense textural layers. She uses the entire guitar, thumping the body, tapping the neck, scraping the strings, to produce a huge variety of tones and sounds. She favours open tuning, giving her enormous freedom when exploring different styles. She flirted with flamenco, Middle Eastern and even Japanese sounds, but it felt organic, coherent and accessible.

Kaki King has an incredibly vibrant curiosity for her craft that pushes her to find new sounds and new ways to stretch the limits of her instruments. She used six or seven different guitars on the night, including her famous seven-string, and a guitar prototype built by a fellow audiophile from the Moog factory, a guitar with built-in transducers that changed the vibration of the strings. Instead of a tonally consistent hum that faded out, the string when plucked could resonate at different frequencies and could be sustained indefinitely. The effect was otherworldly.

Simple pop melodies were exploded to accommodate rich passages of improvisation and colourful flourishes. In between songs King was warm and chatty, eager to share her knowledge and love for her music and how she played it. Despite performing such sophisticated stuff (often at lightening speeds) she never broke a sweat and was relaxed and gracious. For those that missed this run of shows, she is a must see on her eventual return. Kaki King is one of contemporary music's great talents.