Andrew W.K. turns to instrumental jazz noir on the album Temptation To Exist

Andrew W.K. has made an instrumental jazz noir record, which is not a sentence anyone expected to write about him. Temptation To Exist is his first album in five years, arriving 25 years after the debut that made his name and a long way from it.

That debut, 2001's I Get Wet, and its single Party Hard turned partying into something closer to a philosophical position than a pastime: an argument for intensity and for taking as much out of a moment as it will give. The new album approaches the same impulse from the far side of the door, trading maximalist hard rock for something shadowed and cinematic.

The instrumentation is the clearest signal of the change. The record moves across piano, brass, woodwinds, cello, percussion, vibraphone, organ and synthesizers, and the writing is exploratory rather than anthemic, unpredictable in a way his earlier work deliberately was not.

He produced and mixed it himself and played most of it, taking piano, guitar, bass, drums, percussion, organ, celeste, vibraphone, keyboards and synthesizers. Nick Lane plays trombone and bass trombone, Gabe Noel handles cello and bass harmonica, and Ryan Tharayil covers alto saxophone, flute and clarinet while also serving as assistant engineer.

The record was made at Valentine Studios and Lobrutto Visuals with R.C.U. Audio West, both in Los Angeles. Steev Mike is credited as executive producer, Andy Petr engineered and assisted with the mix, and Howie Weinberg, who has mastered a number of his albums, mastered this one. Frank Vierti and Phem C. Palmer handled creative direction, with cover photography by Herb Maximo.

His wife, the actress Kat Dennings, put the case for it on Instagram, writing that he can sit at a piano and play any song from memory without having tried it before. "He's a composing genius, and this is just the beginning," she wrote.

Instrumental turns by rock musicians rarely get taken seriously, which is part of what makes the move interesting. Comparable recent releases include Moster!'s saxophone led album Bolts and the first vinyl pressing of the Rust score. Release dates are collected on the release calendar.