Pulling away from her usual pop structure, Kelly Lee Owen instead embraces a different, abrasive energy. LP.8 pulls apart the bliss and the industrial, merging them into a transcendent mutation. It might be off-putting at first, but the ebb and flow of this energy swirls through with an immense experience.
Like the numeral 8, there is an infinite swirl about Kelly Lee Owen’s surge of energy that propels LP.8 in a different light. For her past few records, Kelly Lee Owens always nestle her compositions and vocals in its bare and tight fundamentals. Instrumentations and melodies that owe their grasp to minimal techno and tech-house, which puts her electronic expressions into the tasteful and approachable territory. Pretty for the most part, with ‘Kelly Lee Owens’ sifting through that aesthetics with all the mist and simplicity and ‘Inner Song’ bringing it to a luminous surface, where those textures wash ashore and allow themselves to glisten like marbled rocks. It does not exactly jump out off the page, as her approach to this sound can feel a bit too immersed in its minimalism.
However, that all changes on ‘LP.8’, an LP that felt like it was made from the future and blasted into the past. It’s made from Kelly’s creative subconscious with helpings from esteemed avant-garde artist Lasse Marhaug, the two merge compositions that needle between the likes of Enya and Throbbing Gristle. As a result of their synthesis, the record unleashes an energy that is both familiar and engulfing, blessed and cursed by the mystics, crawling into a balance that is potent, beautiful, and ominous.
The beauty reserves Kelly Lee Owen’s familiar minimalist brightness, but they’re poked with an abrasive, industrial edge. The sets of fuzzy notes on ‘Release’ immediately burst into low-end rumbles, all interspersed with Kelly Lee Owen’s cold, hushed murmurs of “Release”. It’s an opener that already topples off the listener, their body forcing itself to move along the low-end warbles, spontaneous fuzz, and chilling vocal notes. That spiky energy comes through at spots where that industrial clatter takes its ominous tone to the center. The splattering noise and throbbing bass shamble through on ‘Voice’, where Kelly’s voice becomes an echo chamber amidst the grumbling synths. It may still retain that ominous edge, but that voice breathes a cold yet comforting air even if that comfort will stay for short moments of time. ‘One’ feels like a transmission from the future with all the jittery grainy noise and thumping low-end, accentuated with this maximalist modulation as well as Kelly’s pretty vocal melodies amidst all of it. It tells of the message from the future to the past, where the singer repeatedly awaits the listener from afar with “You are the one / You are the one I’ve been waiting for”. But things eventually go astray on ‘Sonic 8’, where the flow of energy is fractured, emphasized clearly by the noise clanks from the synths, growling low-end bass, and hushed murmurs as well as sweeping sung melodies from Kelly’s voice. It’s a song that embraces its instability, another message from the future where the energy must be fixed in the past, a closure spoken by Kelly in a darker tone where she repeats the phrase “This is an emergency / This is a wake-up call”.
The start and the end of the album may combust its dark ambient clouds to the fullest, but it’s not always the fragments felt and seen throughout the record as the journey coming through displays landscapes engulfed with natural, soothing frost. The 8-minute ‘Anadlu’ is an extended meditation of the now. The rumbling shakes of bass may be present but the glittering chimes, modulating synths, subtle vocal whispers, and the repeated mumbles of “Anadlu” keeps the atmosphere modest and afloat. ‘S.O (2)’ immerses into phrases of patience amidst twittering electronics and organic notes that modulate to elevate further Kelly Lee Owen’s vocal yearnings. It then sweeps into ‘Olga’, another instrumental cut that immerses itself into unstable clarity. The shambling glitch and bellowing deep synths are then contrasted with Kelly’s harmonic bliss, where the softness embodies a temporary calm on the shaking noise. The noise dies down, replaced with a cold yet serene respite on ‘Nana Piano’. Centered around the piano for the entire duration of the song, it plays out in an unsettling manner where the textures echo forth with organic field recordings nestling themselves within. ‘Quickening’ mutates as it goes on, starting out with fizzy stutters and choppy vocal fragments as Kelly Lee Owen’s rather alienating voice spills out how an energy blocked will cease to exist from the other mediums and tells the listener to keep that energy to themselves. Once the speech is done, the instrumentation opens up to a reverberating sound where the vocals, chimes, and organic-sounding synths maximize their tune to the fullest, making a consuming yet piercing wall of sound.
It’s definitely a swerve to Kelly Lee Owen’s holistically tight and minimal beauty of her past work, but to pull away the structure and quaint beauty for a mutation of the industrial and the blissful serves her electronic mold to the fullest. And what has come forth with LP8 is the distinction of time and space, a merge of the dire and the relief, an embodiment of the uncomfortable future and the serene past. It compiles all of those elements, resulting in an immersive, liquid, and fascinating electronic ambient experience that will be heard and touched for a long time. It’s a product of the future that may bring a chill down your spine, but the energy that it evokes, what an infinite expanse that it brings.
Favorite Tracks: ALL OF THEM
Least Favorite Track: NONE OF THEM