Daniel Knox

DANIEL KNOX ANNOUNCES NEW ALBUM MERCADO 48, OUT 5 DECEMBER VIA H.P. JOHNSON PRESENTS

SHARES VIDEO FOR LEAD SINGLE ‘ALLIGATOR’

Watch the video for ‘Alligator’ here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1CpgP0xkwA

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Daniel Knox has today returned with news of his seventh studio album Mercado 48 which will be released on 5 December via his own H.P. Johnson Presents label. Along with the announcement he has shared the video for lead single ‘Alligator’. Since the release of his last album, 2021’s Won’t You Take Me With You (“a majestic body of work that demands repeat listening” – 9/10 Loud and Quiet), Daniel has found a new place, new characters, a new perspective and a new approach to his music having relocated from Chicago to Porto, Portugal where Mercado 48 was born.

Speaking of lead single ‘Alligator’ Knox says:
“I spent a lot of time at this cafe called Asa de Mosca (Wings Of The Fly). There’s a lot of characters there. One guy comes in and tries to sell me things he stole. I usually buy them. He sold me a little wooden elephant, a small fan shaped like a monkey, and one time he tried to sell me what he called a computer that was really just some kind of touch screen kiosk he’d clearly ripped out of the wall somewhere. My long hair and beard get a lot of stares but I like coming to this cafe because on any given night I’m only the third weirdest looking person here.

Sometimes I’ll sit here reading or doing work but my mind gets up and walks around without me. It starts walking three or four blocks away, sits in some other cafe by itself, crosses the street and comes back to watch me from the window outside. After living here for a few years I sometimes have these moments of perspective where I get to see myself outside of myself; as though I were just another one of these characters here. There’s that thing you face at this age where you still want to be the character in some old novel but then you are sitting on the couch watching your new 4K discs of Alligator and Alligator II and you have to reconcile that with who you are and who you want to be.”

At the start of 2023 Daniel Knox found himself standing in Porto – a place he had visited only twice – with no real plan, a suitcase under each arm and the number of the owner of a local shop, Mercado 48, in his pocket. He’s been there ever since.

Daniel met the shop owner in 2019, the last time he played a show in Porto, and he had casually mentioned that if Daniel ever needed a place to stay, he had it covered. Casually. As in, in the kind of way people say sometimes never really expecting the person to show up. Shortly after though, feeling adrift in his native Chicago for the first time and “looking for a fork in the road”, a breakup forced Daniel’s hand and he decided it was time for a change. He quit his beloved job projecting movies at the Music Box Theatre, cashed a cheque he had stumbled upon composing music and standing in reading lines for a play in Tbilisi, Georgia and jumped on a plane to see if the shop owner’s promise might come good.

Fortunately, he did mean it. The place in question was the shop owner’s Mother’s old apartment which was unoccupied, save for a turtle, a cockatiel, a parrot and an old dog named Flor with whom Daniel has now lived for the last three years. The shop itself is a sort of mishmash of art gallery, locally made clothing and décor, gift shop, odds, ends and other curios. It also happens to have an old piano tucked in one of its corners.

Anyone familiar with Daniel Knox knows that these types of pianos are his favourite. He first taught himself to play by sneaking into hotels, bars, and shops with unattended pianos around his native Chicago, so aside from being on the other side of the world, walking into a shop of oddities and finding Daniel trying out new material is not such a rarity. Mercado 48, his seventh album, is, however, a different kind of Daniel Knox record than we’ve seen before.

The album was recorded over two nights in the shop, just Daniel and the piano. You can hear cars driving by, people passing in the street, the creaking and breathing ambiance of unknown source that comes from an old shop at night. You can also hear Daniel figuring out the recording right in front of you, “did you hear my stomach growl”, he asks at one point. Daniel’s old friend Greg Norman of Electrical Audio – where until now Daniel cut most of his albums – flew in to mic up the shop and a few other old friends added feather light additions from afar. Nate Lepine on saxophone, Joshua Fitzgerald Klocek on synths and textures, Thor Harris on vibraphone and percussion, Alex McMahon on pedal steel. Chicago hasn’t quite relinquished its grip yet and there’s one thing Daniel had to go back for, his bi-annual David Lynch retrospective at the Music Box – the world record holder for the most of his works for film and television shown in one place and the most passionately curated Lynch retrospective in the world. For obvious reasons, this year’s was particularly important to Daniel. So, while in Chicago he found a day and got the band together, dotted a few i’s, crossed a few t’s and Mercado 48 was finished.

Pre-order Mercado 48 on CD and vinyl here:
https://danielknox.bandcamp.com/album/mercado-48

Photo credit: José Moutinho

High-res images can be found here

Mercado 48 cover art by José Moutinho

Mercado 48 tracklist:

1. Worst Of All Worlds
2. Don’t Fucking Move
3. Alligator
4. Abandon Ship
5. Scratch The Itch
6. Middle Names
7. Anything That You Lost
8. Finders Takers
9. Never Baby
10. Forcive Habit
11. Guess Not
12. April 3rd
13. April Prelude
14. Snails
15. Of The Body