Daniel Knox shares video for new single ‘Don’t Fucking Move’

DANIEL KNOX SHARES VIDEO FOR NEW SINGLE ‘DON’T FUCKING MOVE’

NEW ALBUM MERCADO 48 OUT 5 DECEMBER VIA H.P. JOHNSON PRESENTS

Watch the video for ‘Don’t Fucking Move’ here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Nq-FjktE_k

Stream here:
https://danielknox.lnk.to/dontmove

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In September Daniel Knox 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 shared the video for lead single ‘Alligator’, he has today followed up with new single ‘Don’t Fucking Move’. For the accompanying video unfocused television footage was projected onto the curtain at the The Music Box Theatre where Daniel used to work as a projectionist. It was filmed by John Atwood and edited by Daniel, with a nod to the late Lenny Borger, an accomplished translator whose name would always appear as the very last credit before the curtain closed.

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. Recorded alone at a piano that sits in the corner of a local shop – Daniel befriended the owner and now also lives the owners Mother’s old apartment, alongside a turtle, a cockatiel, a parrot and an old dog named Flor -, 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 the end of ‘Don’t Fucking Move’.

Mercado 48 isn’t all gentle twilight meanderings and peaceful rebirth in a new place though. To completely start a new life there was always going to be a little extra baggage beyond the two suitcases Daniel arrived with. The nature of Daniel’s reasons for moving halfway across the world are reckoned with. Chiefly this comes in the form of a latent anger that has always lined the fringes of his music. On previous records this sometimes reared its head unexpectedly but here it bubbles gently, allowed its place on the record but in a more accepting way. ‘Don’t Fucking Move’ is a daunting track title, but after its opening line it quickly ebbs away into a fascinatingly oblique, but open and tender, piece of theatre.

“I give anger just enough room to burn so it can work as a fuel that keeps the better parts of me from being extinguished”, Daniel says, “I think there’s always a place for the worst part of you”. Of the track itself, it feels significant that “Don’t Fucking Move” was the very first line Daniel wrote for the album and yet the rest of this track was the last thing written – noticeably shifting in tone throughout from one act of Daniel’s life to another. This thespian setting is further lifted by the voice of Chicago playwright and musician Nick Jones, “the voice saying “Act I. Scene II.” is Nick who cast me as myself in two of his plays”, Daniel says, “I was good in one and terrible in the other”.

For the recording of Mercado 48 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 Theatre – 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 in Jamdek Studios, 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 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