"They came to me at first, but I said nah," King says. "I was too into working on my dance tracks. But then they were going on tour and Butterfly [the group's male MC] came back to me and asked again, so I said okay. I guess the rest, to use the phrase, is history." But the pull of the four-four proved too strong. Near the end of the Planets days, King met Wink, and the two went on to found Ovum Recordings, one of the most influential electronic music labels to date. Then came the DJ gigs and the remixes for people like Tori Amos and Macy Gray; the rest, to use the phrase, is dance-floor history. But then there were the dreams (the sleeping kind).
"When I first started working on this record," King says of his latest album, "I was having a particular series of dreams. So, like people keep a diary when they first wake up, I did kind of the same thing. I went right to the studio and started recording little sequences. And it took this form, which is cool because I wanted to make a kind of old-school, really, really Detroit album."
So far The Nova Dream Sequence has won kudos from techno pioneers like Juan Atkins and Derrick May, so King must have done something right. And he isn't worried about alienating his typical fan base.
"You know, when I come down here, I love playing Aquabooty, because it's real deep, real soulful," King says. "But I think a lot of those people are really cool and will come out to hear something different. Anyways, I actually dig playing smaller rooms. You hear the sound better; it's more intimate." — Arielle Castillo
