“The pounding four-on-the-floor rhythm section on ‘Melt!’ makes for both a club banger and a political comment, a dazzling dance macabre for impending environmental collapse.” — Pitchfork, “Best New Track”
“[Kelly Lee Owens] makes skittish techno that makes the hairs on your neck stand up and demands to be heard in a dripping warehouse.” — The Guardian
“a fathomless, flickering techno banger” — Gorilla vs. Bear Convention-blurring techno producer/musician Kelly Lee Owens releases a new song, “Night.” The track appears on her new album, Inner Song, which has been moved to August 28th on Smalltown Supersound. Following techno banger “Melt!,” “Night” opens with a monopoly synth and Owen’s soft, intimate vocals, before transforming with a danceable, staccato rhythm and jockeying beat.
“This track speaks as to how feelings and insights are more accessible to us at nighttime – how the veils are thinner somehow and therefore how we are more able to connect to our hearts true desires,” says Owens. “I wanted to release this track as a gift to you during this crazy time, to give a part of my heart to you all.” Listen to “Night” by Kelly Lee Owens https://KellyLeeOwens.lnk.to/night
Ghosts V: Together is one of two instrumental albums released for free by Nine Inch Nails as gifts to everyone during the COVID-19 pandemic. The albums are meant for meditation, reflection, or ambient sounds for study or work or pleasure.
As the title suggests, this album is meant to inspire a sense of belonging despite separation. The titles of the tracks evoke hope and courage. “Letting Go While Holding On,” the album’s opener, is over nine minutes of meditative drones and minimalist percussion and lets us know that releasing our grip on the past is the only way to move forward. “Together” is over ten minutes of ambient sounds that resemble radio static, as if NIN is reminding us of our connection over distant miles as we try to tune in to stations we can barely hear. “Out in the Open” follows, reflecting what we all hope we’ll be soon. Its shiny synths bring to mind images of sunlight breaking through dark clouds.
We can get there “With Faith” – a song that blends simple, soft percussion with chant-like synths. “Apart” is the longest track at thirteen minutes and thirty-five seconds. It’s fitting, as sometimes it seems we’ve been apart during this pandemic for ages and will continue to be that way for the foreseeable future. “Your Touch” brightens things up a bit as it helps us remember the warmth of human contact.
“Hope We Can Again” sums up the mood of a lot of people well. It combines simple music box tunes with simmering synths that reflect a simple warmth that everyone hopes to have again. The closer is “Still Right Here,” which, thankfully, most of us are. We are here, biding our time, seeing changes that are happening and ones that need to be made, and looking forward to coming out to embrace each other, and the upbeat drums of this final track are there to encourage us.
Don’t expect industrial beats, trance floor-fillers, and angry yelling on this album (or the next). This record isn’t made for that. It’s made to calm all of us down. Let it happen.
Recorded and self-produced in their Berlin apartment, The KVB‘S 2018 album, Only Now Forever, is a neat mixture of contrasts. It is melancholic, yet ebullient. Somber, yet hopeful. Moody, yet joyful. It’s an honest look at modern living and a warning against its trappings. The title of the album itself is a suggestion of presence. We only have now, this moment, forever. The past never existed. The future never will. We can embrace this divine truth or we can stay buried in a past long gone or worry about a future that doesn’t yet exist – and will be completely different from what we expect when it does arrive…in the now.
Opening single, “Above Us,” is a shadowed electro-pop tune with definite Berlin krautrock influences to its beats and bass as Kat Day and Nicholas Wood sing about rising above the drudgery of modern life. “On My Skin” is a beautiful track with haunting synths by Day and playful ghost-like guitar work by Wood as he sings a tale of a relationship that’s come to an end for reasons unknown to him.
The title track opens like a lost early 1980’s film score that backs a race on some sort of futuristic motorcycle. Day’s synth bass and beats are like android heartbeats. “And the past has all been done. The circle comes ’round again. All I fear will go away. It’s only now just begun,” Wood sings. Fear, like all things, is impermanent (if we allow it to be), and The KVB encourage us to step off the treadmill of fear and move forward under our own power. I’m sure “Afterglow” has been remixed and spun in multiple Berlin industrial / dance clubs by now because it evokes images of Replicants seducing humans and vice-versa.
“With everything, there comes a price,” Wood sings at the beginning of “Violet Noon,” which the band describes on their Bandcamp page as “a romantic ode to the apocalypse.” I can’t describe it any better than that. Day’s breathy vocals on “Into Life” will make your pulse quicken and your spine shiver. “Live in Fiction” is another warning from them. “Everything in the world has changed. I cannot find the truth,” Wood sings. People have embraced fiction over truths that upset their comfortable realities, even when those truths would improve their lives and the lives of those around them.
“Tides” is appropriately named because Day’s synth swell and ebb like the tide, almost catching you off-guard now and then with their sudden burst of energy. “No Shelter” slinks into the room like a femme fatale walking into a detective’s office in a 1950’s dime novel. The album ends with the upbeat “Cerulean,” which has Day laying down a wicked synth-bass groove and her backing vocals feeling like a cool mist as Wood’s feel like a warm canyon wall echo.
Only Now Forever encourages us to accept truth and embrace the present. It’s themes resonate even more in 2020 than they did two years ago.
Hailing from Peru but based in Berlin, producer / DJ Sofia Kourtesis released a four-track EP, Sarita Colonia, earlier this year that slipped under my radar until I read about it in an article about the best electronic music we might’ve missed so far in 2020. I’m glad I found that article (which I can now no longer locate), because Sarita Colonia is a gem I would’ve otherwise overlooked.
The opening title track gets off to a great bouncy house start. The synths grow in volume and brightness as a steady dance beat keeps us grounded. “Moninga,” with its reversed samples and loops, is even happier than its predecessor. It even includes a sample from the cult film The Warriors (“Everybody says Cyrus is the one and only.”), which delighted me.
“Hollywood” is a groovy house track with thumping bass, Marilyn Monroe samples, synthesized hand percussion, and beats that shake more than a rabbit’s nose. It turns into a floor-filler around the two-minute mark when the synths back off and the bass takes the forefront. The closer, “Akariku,” has snappy synth-beats that almost sound like they’re cut off before they become full chops as heartbeat-bass thuds alongside them. The synths bubble until they’re at a rolling boil and you’re incapable of standing still by this point in the song (not even a full two minutes). The song is about love and lust, sampling The Temptations‘ “I Heard it Through the Grapevine” and Jakatta‘s “Ride the Storm.”
This is a slick EP. A full-length from Ms. Kourtesis would be a great addition to 2020’s electronic music catalog, but this well-crafted record is a great appetizer for more things to come.
UK producer / DJ Matt Karmil‘s new album, STS371, has an enigmatic title and equally intriguing song titles and cover (Are those worms? Fish? Amoebas?). The music is just as fascinating because it’s some of the best electro-house released so far this year.
The opener, “Smoke,” starts with chopped vocal samples and scratchy record sounds before dance floor beats and bass subtly drop into the track. “Hard” beings with dreamy synths that pulse like a heartbeat and then that sweet bass drops in to get you and, I would venture to guess, your lover moving.
You might think that a song called “Snail Shower” would be a slow, mellow cut, but it’s the opposite. It’s a bright, refreshing track with looped synths. “PB” was the first single released from the album. It’s a bold track with synths that hint at anger but drums and bass that hint at being a cool cat…until that wicked high hat comes in and gets you in the mood to move.
As someone who is studying the French language, I love the title of “Still Not French” – a peppy house tune that I can envision hearing while on the train in Paris. “Congo” is as steamy and mysterious as its namesake, with beats that are so layered they almost seem to trip over each other. “SR WB” could be the theme to a lost sci-fi show from the 1980’s.
“Breezy” continues the dance beats (and, wow, that electro-high-hat!) and adds poppy synths to the mix. “210” ends the album with more bright beats, sizzling synths, and body-moving grooves.
Even after listening to STS371, I’m still not clear on the meanings of the album’s and songs’ titles, but that’s okay. We don’t have to know everything. We can just play an album like this and groove to it while we undergo self-isolation.
Acclaimed UK producer and engineer MattKarmil will release his new album, STS371, on March27th via SmalltownSupersound, and today presents a new single, “210.” Following lead single “PB,” “210” opens with shuffling synthesizer, later quickening with a muted, staccato beat.
“210 is named after a hotel room in Amsterdam,” says Karmil, “although not one I’ve ever stayed in. I like the way the chord hangs in the air and it’s, to me at least, somehow both intimate and urgent.”
STS371 is Karmil’s most concise album to date, with his signature mix of minimalism and reverb-drenched house still being the backbone of his warm, rich, atmospheric and melancholic sound. It was made largely while Karmil was traveling in a nonlinear process of recording. Anticipating the completion of his music studio in The Cotswolds in England, Karmil favored “on the fly” production methods to finish his album.
While his works fit within the tradition of techno’s timeless anonymity, Karmil’s highly personal music is anything but a xerox on dance music’s previous life. As Karmil puts it – minimally, simply and functionally: “I made a conscious effort to up the energy, and found a collection of tunes that felt coherent to me.”
STS371 follows 2018’s Will. Since the release of Will he has co-produced and mixed KornélKovács’ acclaimed StockholmMarathon. He has also worked with, among many others, MatiasAguayo for CrammedDiscs and Talaboman for R&S, as an engineer, mixing and mastering.
It’s a bit difficult to describe the music of Radar Men from the Moon (who are actually from the Netherlands). Is it psychedelia? Prog-rock? Synthwave? Shoegaze? All of that? None of it? I’m not sure. They were all playing synthesizers, sequencers, and drum machines when I saw them at Levitation Francea couple years ago, and Subversive I is heavy on electronica and synths, whereas other albums are more guitar-based. I do know, however, that everything I’ve heard from them is good.
Subversive Iis the part of a triptych of albums released in consecutive years starting in 2015. Subversive I is only four instrumental tracks, but the shortest one is six-and-a-half minutes long.
That one is the first track, “Deconstruction,” which starts off with fuzzy synth bass and sharp drum beats before robot pulse guitars come in to get you moving. It’s an industrial dance track in many ways, again making RMFTM difficult to categorize.
“Habitual” takes on a darkwave tone with guitars that sound like they were recorded in a dark tomb and bass and synths that sounds like some…thing pounding and clawing it’s way out of that tomb.
“Neon” is the longest track on the album at eleven minutes and sixteen seconds. It starts quiet and brooding, like a slow, building rain hitting a tin roof. It turns into a theme for a cool futuristic mystery-thriller movie you think you’ve seen but never have.
The closer, “Hacienda,” is the most “in your face” song on the record with its buzz-saw guitars and “Peter Gunn”-like bass that gets under your skin.
Subversive I, like a lot of RMFTM’s work, is one of those albums that changes the feel of the room when you play it. It’s one of those albums that makes people ask, “What is this?” Sometimes they ask it out of intrigue, other times out of confusion, and other times out of apprehension. If that doesn’t make you want to hear it, I don’t know what will.
The fourth album by Public Image Ltd., This Is What You Want…This Is What You Get, came out in the Year of Orwell – 1984. The world was in the middle of the Cold War and people were wondering which side was going to first heat it up. It was the “me decade” here in the U.S. for Wall Street tycoons who were grabbing all the wealth they could while the rest of us were waiting on Trickle Down Economics to make our lives easier. Spoiler alert: We’re still waiting.
John Lydon and guitarist Keith Levene were working on the album and had an early mix, entitled Commercial Zone, completed. Levene took it to Virgin Records, but Lydon abandoned the project and re-recorded all of it to create This Is What You Want…This Is What You Get.
It starts with the buzzy “Bad Life,” which was the first single off the record. It mixes funky bass with cool horn blasts as Lydon sings, “This machine is on the move. Looking out for number one.” It’s a nice shove at 1980’s yuppies stepping on others to get what they want. The title of the album is repeated over electric drum beats toward the end of the track (and throughout the album).
“This Is Not a Love Song” was Lydon’s poke at people who kept asking him, “Why don’t you write a love song?” He write a brassy jam that mostly repeats the title and ended up being one of his biggest hits. “Happy to have and not to have not. Big business is very wise. I’m crossing over into the enterprise,” he sings, telling all of us that he could take the money and run if he wanted.
Louis Bernardi‘s bass on “Solitaire” is downright nasty. You could easily slap it onto a funk record and it wouldn’t sound out of place. “Tie Me to the Length of That” is a reference to Lydon’s birth, even referencing the doctor who slapped him when he was born. It crawls around the room like a creepy goblin. The horn section echoes from the background like some sort of distant warning.
“The Pardon” has Lydon calling people out for being resistant to change. The beat is a weird tribal jam that is hard to describe but one that sinks into your head. “Where Are You?” is barely controlled chaos as Lydon searches for…someone. I’m still not sure whom.
“1981” is a post-punk classic with Lydon ranting about everything he could see was going to go wrong in the decade and how he figured it might be best to leave England for a while. The drums are sharp, the baritone sax angry, the cymbals sizzling, and the lyrics biting: “I could be desperate. I could be brave…I want everything in 1981.”
The album’s title is repeated again at the beginning of the last track – “The Order of Death” – killer drum beats back dark piano chords. The guitar chords are like something out of a Ridley Scott film score. It’s a cool ending to a cool record, and somewhat of a forgotten post-punk classic.
Blanck Mass, the solo project of Benjamin John Power, is re-issuing the long out-of-print 2011 debut album Blanck Mass via Sacred Bones Records. The deluxe double LP comes out on Record Store Day (April 18) in the UK on exclusive green-and-blue starburst vinyl, and on April 24 in the rest of the world.
The original press release for the album called it “a collection of tracks loosely themed around cerebral hypoxia and the beautiful complexity of the natural world…An interstellar journey that defies classification, revealing itself further and further with each listen; offering more with each visit.”
Power went on to reflect on the album at the time: “I do like the fact that this album represents a pretty clear image of myself,that which I am aware of and that which might be controlled by some other type of subconscious guidance.”
Convention-blurring techno producer/musician Kelly Lee Owens will release her second album, Inner Song, on May 1st via Smalltown Supersound. Alongside the announcement, she presents its lead single/visual, “Melt!” Inner Song finds Owens diving deep into her own psyche—working through the struggles she’s faced over the last several years and exploring personal pain while embracing the beauty of the natural world. It’s a leap in artistry from a musician who burst forth on the scene with a confident, rich sound, and is steadily enticing. Inner Song follows the 2017 release of her much laudedself-titled debut, as well as remixes of St. Vincent and by Björk, last year’s “Let It Go / Omen” 12”, and her recent collaboration with Jon Hopkins.
The hair-raising bass and tickling textures of Inner Song drive home that, more so than ever, Owens is locked in to delivering maximal aural pleasure and is adept at containing musical and emotional multitudes within just one song. The album features an unconventional Radioheadcover, the voice of fellow Welsh artist John Cale over a psychedelic lullaby, an electro-pop number that glimmers with yo-yo synths and a tough as nails backbeat, and techno banger “Melt!” Although sonically distinct from the rest of Inner Song, “Melt!” is an essential piece of the album. Throughout, Owens comments on the ever-pressing issue of climate change, right down to its structural composition, which includes samples of melting glacial ice and people skating on thin ice. “I wanted to create something that sounded hard but with organic samples.I felt those were great representations of what’s happening in the world, that every moment you’re breathing and sleeping, this is taking place,” says Owens. Its accompanying video, directed by filmmakerLaneya Billingsley (aka Billie0cean), creates a connection between our bodies and the earth, and shows how the two are not separate. Watch Kelly Lee Owens’ Visuals for “Melt!” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kW0vbVEIXE
Stream “Melt!” https://kellyleeowens.lnk.to/melt Inner Song came out of what Owens describes as “the hardest three years of my life. . .my creative life and everything I’d worked for up to that point was deeply impacted. I wasn’t sure if I could make anything anymore, and it took quite a lot of courage to get to a point where I could create again.” The evocative title of the album, borrowed from free-jazz maestro Alan Silva‘s 1972 opus, “really reflects what it felt like to make this record. I did a lot of inner work in the past few years, and this is a true reflection of that.”
Inner Song is available for pre-order now. The vinyl is being released as a sesquialbum, or triple-sided album, with the fourth side etched by Kim Hiorthøy. Pre-order Inner Song https://kellyleeowens.lnk.to/innersong
Inner Song Tracklist: 1. Arpeggi 2. On 3. Melt! 4. Re-Wild 5. Jeanette 6. L.I.N.E. 7. Corner Of My Sky 8. Night 9. Flow 10. Wake-Up
Kelly Lee Owens Tour Dates: Fri. Feb. 28 – London, UK @ Southbank Centre (DJ) Sat. Feb. 29 – Milan, IT @ Contemporary Art Pavillion (DJ) Fri. March. 6 – London, UK @ 6 Music Festival (DJ) Sat. March. 7 – Graz, AT @ Elevate Festival (DJ) Sat. March. 21 – Istanbul, TU @ Babylon (DJ) Fri. March. 27 – Rome, IT @ Manifesto Festival (DJ) Wed. May. 06 – Brighton, UK @ Patterns – Warm Up Show Fri. May. 08 – Manchester, UK @ YES – Warm Up Show Sat. May. 09 – Berlin, DE @ Pitchfork Music Festival Wed. May. 13 – London, UK @ Rough Trade East Sat. May. 23 – London, UK @ All Points East Festival Sun. June. 14 – Dhërmi, AL @ Kala Festival Sat. June. 27 – Perk, BE @ Paradise City Festival Fri. July. 10 – Bilbao, ES @ BBK Live Festival Thu. July. 30 – Amsterdam, NL @ Dekmantel Festival
