Following up her masterful 2024 LP ‘Dreamstate’, a lush, lucid and airy collection of club music, was always going to be a tricky task for Kelly Lee Owens. But, instead of trying to strictly emulate its effervescent, emotionally-charged tone, the Welsh electronic musician and DJ has instead come up with a heavier, harder follow-up.
The four new tracks that make up ‘Kelly’ aren’t a total gear-shift as their creator is too much of an auteur, but they do keep their feet more firmly on the concrete club floor rather than reaching for any celestial lasers.
Owens has described herself as feeling “really quite angry at the moment” and it’s a mood expressed by the darker, more sinister hues explored here.
Descent is all dense 140-esque bass wobbles and cavernous, breakbeat hardcore rhythms. Atop it all sits Owens’ gentle vocals, which make for a fascinating tonal juxtaposition.
Even opener Ascent, with its imagistic title and opening vocals (“it’s all outside your mind / yeah you give it away”) hits, following a shameless build and subsequent drop, with squelchy, acid techno force.
This reliance on drops (Lose Your Head also incorporates a huge one at its mid-point) might be divisive. But it feels in keeping with Owens’ recent activism work for the Music Venue Trust. What better way to get punters back into clubs than to offer such familiar and undeniably endearing moments of catharsis?
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