K (album)

K is the debut album by English psychedelic rock band Kula Shaker, released on 16 September 1996. It became the fastest selling debut album in Britain since Elastica's debut the previous year, selling 105,768 copies in the first week. The album reached the number-one position on the UK Albums Chart and number 200 on the US Billboard 200. It was voted number 879 in the third edition of Colin Larkin's All Time Top 1000 Albums (2000).

The Grateful Dead's psychedelic rock style is an influence on Kula Shaker's first and second albums. The hidden track after "Hollow Man" is a recording of A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, the founder of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, speaking about his own guru.

Artwork

The cover art (by comic-book artist Dave Gibbons) consists of various images related to the letter K, including: John F. Kennedy, Lord Kitchener, Karl Marx, Gene Kelly, Katharine Hepburn, Ken Dodd, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Danny Kaye, Kal-El (Superman), Boris Karloff (as Frankenstein's monster), Krishna, King Kong, Martin Luther King Jr., two Knights (a pair of Keys on one of them), a Kettle, Kali, the Kaiser, Nikita Khrushchev, Grace Kelly, the number 11 (symbolizing K), and Rudyard Kipling's book Kim.

Critical reception

The Independent noted that "Kula Shaker do what they do with so much gall, energy, conviction and dexterity (special honours go to the speedy bass-playing) that you forget to nitpick and imagine you're really hearing a lost masterpiece from 1971."