King was written in response to Simon Steen-Andersen's work, On and Off and To and Fro, which featured in the Workers Union Ensemble's 2015 tour. The dialecticism suggested in Steen- Anderson's title is also a common feature of my own work more generally, as it is for many others. I use the term 'dialectic' simply because the notions of 'On And Off And To And Fro' are not just contrasting ideas but are intrinsically related and relative to one another; they're connected precisely because of their direct opposition. At the risk of becoming too technical, there are, in many types of music, examples of these binary relationships - tonic/dominant, major/minor, call/response, antecedent/consequence and so on. The majority of my piece playfully brings into contention these various devises and explores their functional (and dysfunctional) properties. However, this isn't entirely what the piece is about and there's a small twist in the tale towards the end, which extends this notion beyond the purely musical.
