King pari

It’s unseasonably warm and you’re not hungover, like, at all. The public pool opens in ten minutes. The pool is packed and everyone’s playing that game where you grease up a watermelon and try to catch it. The beers are seven dollars but you’ve got two cold Red Stripes in your backpack. Some kid has a boombox and asks you what to put on. You already know exactly what you’re choosing. King Pari. 

King Pari is an almost accidental project. Cameron Kinghorn and DJ Stepmom didn’t even set out to start a band. When Joe (DJ Stepmom) texted Cameron some jams whipped up on his tape machine, Cameron hit him back with “what is this? I want in”. Ten minutes before they first linked up, Joe built the loop for ‘Sunshine,’ which they then wrote on the spot in a flurry of collective inspiration. The rest of their forthcoming ‘MARY EP’ (Acrophase Records/PPU) grew from recording sessions in Joe’s Northeast Minneapolis bedroom, a guest house in New Orleans and a cabin in rural Wisconsin. Minneapolis left an obvious mark — the influence of Prince and the Minneapolis Sound, approached from a fresh psychedelic angle. It’s been called stonersoul, lo-fi R&B, and dub meets 80’s electro with a heavy dose of funk.

With these new songs in hand, the group played their first public show on the historic First Avenue Mainroom stage in Minneapolis, opening for the incomparable Kamasi Washington in August 2019, and charming the full house that night.

On the ‘MARY EP’ King Pari leans into the accidental and improvisational nature of music, embracing imperfections, lo-fi inclinations, and fuckups. The EP is entirely self-produced, recorded, written, and mixed, giving it a real handcrafted and personal feel. For both Cameron and Joe, this project is a culmination of many personal things. It can be goofy as shit, but also introspective and occasionally dark and gloomy. It’s dancy and funky, but often dreamy. It’s a distillation of every group and side project they’ve played in before - even a 90s R&B cover band.

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PRESS:

King Pari‘s debut single is a perfect late-summer song. It’s a little funky, a little lazy, and full of “Sunshine.”

- Minnesota Public Radio, The Current