King Llama

Right out of the starting gate, it’s apparent that the eagerly awaited new King Llama album, fata implexis (translating to “fate intertwined”), is something special, commanding and category-elastic. The fiery and whip smart instrumental band’s tune “Lora Ky” packs an immediate and visceral punch, within its sophisticated changes, spidery guitar riffs, tricky unison lines and mosaic-like structure, built from material conjured up by guitarist-songwriter Ryan T. Bailey. The song serves as a prelude and on-ramp to the electrifying journey unfolding over six tracks—including the multi-sectional 11-minute epic “Sir Isaac.”

What to call this music? Is it prog rock, post-fusion, and earthier variation on math rock, which also manages to be suitable for the jamband universe? Or is it, as the dynamic drummer Luis Briones wonders, something along the lines of “experimental fusion-influenced jamband music? By whatever name or genre identifier, this music makes a bold statement on impact and paves the way for a bright future for this unique band. At the core of the operation is a deep musical connection between guitarist-composer Ryan T. Bailey and Briones, who have tended the King Llama fires for many years and released their debut, Return to Ox in 2016. As with much of the music world, the band’s forward motion was interrupted by the pandemic and the shuttering of live music, which then led to a long process of composing, rethinking and expanding the vision of the band.

Bailey recalls that, at the onset of the COVID lockdown, “people were just focused on their own families and all this other stuff. Once I felt safe enough to at least be able to go to my own studio space, I would be going there every day and every night to compose, just for no reason.” The reason unfolded a few years later, in the form of fata implexis. “It’s a new era for us,” Briones asserts. “We’ve been around for over 12 years, but we’ve evolved. We used to be a little simple trio of more rock stuff and our previous album really was much more bare bones. This new album is more produced, with featured players, multiple guitar lines, some strings and some other things. Things change. But the essence of everything is pretty much the same.”

A critical third party entered the equation on the new album four years ago, when renowned veteran producer Dennis MacKay was connected to Bailey through record exec Michael Caplan. MacKay’s dazzling resume as producer and in-demand engineer includes the seminal Return to Forever classic Romantic Warrior (which helped launch his career), David Bowie, Stanley Clarke (earning him a Grammy in 2011), Al DiMeola, John McLaughlin, Whitney Houston and also the legendary British fusion band Brand X--the initial connection inspiring Brand X fanatic Bailey’s link to the producer.

MacKay may serve the role that George Martin did for the Beatles, a collaborative pact he appreciates. “They’re younger and more experimental,” MacKay says. “They told me ‘do whatever you want to do,’ and they literally meant that. I went, ‘my God, this is a dream come true.’ That was another reason why I wanted to work with them.”

Contrasting more music nerdy instrumental music in the prog-rock and fusion zones, MacKay also brought a more carefully-crafted and polished production sensibility and wider appeal to the music. “There are kind of pop moments,” MacKay says, “and melody moments, which is unlike more intense fusion. I wanted to open more doors by adding these melodies. It’s got little hooks here and there, which fusion usually doesn’t have.”

As Bailey explains, “Dennis is incredibly creative. He has worked with so many great musicians and knows these melodies. It’s all inside of him, and he gets inspired from some of my ideas, and comes up with his own ideas. He’s a writer on the album, as far as I’m concerned. “He was going through a lot of my old ideas and with some of what he found, he was saying ‘oh, this is excellent. Can we redo this? Was this ever recorded?’ The tracks ‘Bus Stop’ and ‘Level Z’ were both original ideas that I had from a long time ago but were completely bare bones in comparison to what we turned them into.”

Among MacKay’s conceptual ideas, along with his addition of melodic and structural ideas on the pieces, was the introduction of another guitarist, the naturally skilled young Billy Paulsen, as a secondary voice to expand Bailey’s guitar-based compositional road maps. Bassist Anthony Crawford provides a firm foundation, along with standout solo moments, and MacKay put in a call to his old friend, Brand X bassist Percy Jones, to add his distinctive fretless bass sound to the atmospheric closing track, “Vita et Mors.”

Bailey points out a larger resonance and cross-reference in the album title fata implexis, and the meshing of fates as relates to the current, rebirthed stage of King Llama. He envisions a thematic narrative in the music relating to “the fate of a son and a father intertwined, where the son’s looking for the dad on the other side of the universe and eventually they find each other. Their states are intertwined somehow. “I feel like through bringing a lot of the musicians together, the connection with Dennis and the people that we’re building right now, it all feels very similar.”

Clearlake Studios, North Hollywood CA ‘23

Awards

At the top of the fall season of 2025, Jump Ship (2025) has landed as a Grammy Contender for Best Jazz Performance.