David Karsten Daniels

David Karsten Daniels
David Karsten Daniels in Chapel Hill, North Carolina (2007)
Background information
Origin	Lubbock, Texas, United States
Genres	Indie rock Indie folk Americana Indie pop
Occupation(s)	Musician
Instruments	Guitar, Bass, Drums, Keyboards, Violin, Cello, Programming
Years active	2000–present
Associated acts	Fight the Big Bull, Frigtened Rabbit, The Prayers and Tears of Arthur Digby Sellers, Kapow! Music, The Physics of Meaning, Our Brother the Native, Penny and Sparrow, -topic, Lex Land, Chris Walker, Driver Friendly, The Many Hands, Matthew E. White
Website	[1]

David Karsten Daniels is an American singer-songwriter with an affinity for "slow-creeping songs that, once at full power, are like nothing else". His recordings are typically combinations of many styles of music sitting underneath lyrics that tend to explore life, death, family, religion, change and the natural world.

Daniels was born in Lubbock, Texas on August 20, 1979. His formative years were spent in Montgomery, Alabama, singing in school and church choirs, and studying the piano and guitar. Daniels spent two years in the American Boychoir School, an all boy's boarding school in Princeton, New Jersey where he was exposed to college level music theory and ear training. He played in jazz ensembles throughout high school in Montgomery, Alabama and Dallas, Texas. In college, David majored in music composition and played double bass in the symphony orchestra. A course in Free Improvisation taught by trombonist/improviser/lecturer Kim Corbett would prove to be major turning point in David's approach to composition.

While obtaining his bachelor's degree from Southern Methodist University, through which he studied in Paris, France, as well as in Texas, David worked on the recordings that would become his first two albums, The Mayflower and Out From Under Ligne 4. Following graduation in 2001, David moved briefly to Portland, Oregon where he began work on the recordings that would become his third album, Angles. in 2002, David moved to Chapel Hill, North Carolina. There, the Bu hanan Collective was formed by David and longtime friends and band mates Daniel Hart and Alex Lazara. In 2006, David was signed by Fat Cat Records of Brighton, England, and released his fourth album, Sharp Teeth as a co-release between Fat Cat and Bu hanan. He followed that with Fear of Flying in 2008, a meditation on death and the afterlife. His next LP, "I Mean to Live Here Still," (2010) is a song cycle using the texts of Henry David Thoreau, with Daniels' music and singing accompanied by Fight the Big Bull, a nonet from Richmond, VA led by Matthew E. White. That album, characterized by The Line of Best Fit as "brave and beautiful [...], marrying the North American folk vernacular with interesting free-jazz textures and atmospheres" was called one of the "5 Best Genre Defying Albums of 2010" by NPR. In 2014, Daniels created the score for S. Cagney Gentry's feature film Harvest.David released his first largely instrumental album The Four Immeasurable Minds in 2015. In 2016 he released 2 records, The Teacher a lo-fi full length heavily dependent on field recordings as well as his 9th studio album Kaleidoscope, an EP released May 19th, 2016.