Kelly Lee Owens — On
In 2017, Kelly Lee Owens released her self-titled debut album: an album of melodic but obtuse electronic music and techno-infused pop. It was a fascinating record, and was one of my favourite albums of the year. Her followup, Inner Song, was slated for release on May 1 this year, but, due to the constantly unfolding crisis that is this pandemic, it will now be released on Aug 28. Last week, she released On, a track from the album, as a single with two additional tracks. If it’s any indication of what’s coming, it’s going to be another superb outing.
Despite the masterful assembly of minimal techno inspired instrumentation, and constantly inventive arrangements (every song appears to duck and swerve to avoid pop music’s sine-wave traps: there’s no predictable loud-soft-loud dynamics or falling into verse-chorus-verse traps), the thing that stands out most to me is the use of the human voice as an instrument.
In most songs, the human voice serves two purposes:
to narrate a story through the song’s lyrics
to be an instrument, through melody and harmony (and as percussion in, say hip-hop).
Easily accessible samplers, digital recording techniques, and MIDI equipment, have made the second use increasingly common. From the u-oo-u-oo-oo of Justin Bieber’s Sorry (with unbelievably catchy production from by Skrillex and BLOOD) to virtually every Kanye West song. It’s the natural way of the music world:
new technology introduces new sounds that at first seem weird and ‘not real music’ (imagine the first electric guitar or distortion pedal; now think of your reaction to the first time you heard autotuned vocals).
the technology becomes more commonplace, and what at first seemed weird is now just part of the landscape. Critics, who up until this point have been bemoaning this new sound at ‘not music’ rush to embrace some artist who they proclaim has ‘finally figured out how to use this well’.
the new sound either goes the way of a fad, or becomes part of the mainstream, like the use of the human voice as an instrument has.
What I loved most about these tracks is that they’re such an inventive take on something that’s become core to the music mainstream that it’s only after a few listens that you become aware that the music you’re listening to has musical predecessors. That it hasn’t just been immaculately conceived.
Long story short, I really enjoyed this EP, and the full-length is likely to be very very good. Hard recommend.
You can find it here.
Check out my latest releases here.
Wonder what the point of music is on the sixth of March, twenty twenty two. Wonder if it serves the same purpose it served fifty, eighty, one hundred, one thousand years ago. Maybe six thousand years ago, that age’s Leonard Cohen wrote wryly of the migration patterns of wildebeest. I’ve been working on new music over the past half year. Here’s a pleasant house cover of the Cure’s Just Like Heaven.