| Modern Yesterdays | |
| Type: | studio |
| Artist: | Kaki King |
| Cover: | Kaki King - Modern Yesterdays.jpg |
| Alt: | A photo of King's face, covered with sand |
| Recorded: | March 2020 |
| Studio: | New York City, New York, United States |
| Genre: | Experimental rock |
| Language: | Instrumental |
| Label: | Cantaloupe Music |
| Producer: | Kaki King |
| Prev Title: | Live in Berklee |
| Prev Year: | 2017 |
Modern Yesterdays is a 2020 studio album by American rock guitarist Kaki King, release on Cantaloupe Music.
King built the album around a live performance piece Data Not Found that would be toured as a stage show, but these plans were canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Recording the album in March 2020, everyone in the studio got the disease, leaving the guitarist struggling to recover her dexterity as a musician almost a year later. Preparation for the recording and stage show included King making custom-designed guitars with a luthier and using obscure technology such as the Vo96, which changes string vibrations on her guitar to achieve unique sounds. To finalize the recordings, King put guitar and percussion parts to tape, leaving the rest of the songs to be created by sound designer Chloe Alexandra with King coming in at the final mix to approve the recordings.
Editors at AllMusic Guide scored this release 4.5 out of five stars, declaring it among the Best of 2020, with critic Thom Jurek spotlighting several tracks where King's experimentation shines, with descriptions such as "her deft, muscular fingerpicking rings across the middle- and lower-register strings amid a labyrinth of refracted sounds -- bubbles, wordless synthed vocal choruses, percussive reverb, etc. -- as she moves through intricate, driving, polytonal melodies articulated in several musical languages simultaneously".
All songs written by Kaki King