Andrew W.K. has released a surprise instrumental jazz album
'Temptation To Exist' trades party rock for piano, brass and vibraphone.
Andrew W.K. has surprise-released 'Temptation To Exist', a ten-track instrumental album and his first full-length in five years.
It appeared first on his fan platform AWKSHARE before landing on streaming services, and it sounds nothing like the records that made him. Piano, brass, woodwinds, cello, vibraphone, organ and synths replace the guitars, with W.K. playing most of it himself alongside Nick Lane on trombone, Gabe Noel on cello and Ryan Tharayil on saxophone, flute and clarinet.
The album was produced and mixed by W.K. in Los Angeles and mastered by Howie Weinberg. It follows 2021's 'God Is Partying'.
His wife Kat Dennings did the announcing. "My husband, Andrew W.K., secretly released a noir, surreal, instrumental jazz album Friday night," she wrote. "Nobody will ever know what he went through to land here, his most exquisite musical era yet. I've never seen anyone who can sit down at a piano and literally play any song entirely from memory that he's never tried playing before. He's a composing genius, and this is just the beginning."
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