Few artists are as adept at fusing electronic musics warmth and coldness as Kelly Lee Owens. What makes Owens work so distinctive is her equal proficiency as a songwriter and producer; her vocals are as confident and captivating as her beats.Inner Song, her second album, boasts a variety of styles, floating between tight pop structures and extended club grooves. What ties the record together is her unusual ability to join the physical with the emotional.

Owens self-titled debut album played with sounds that felt spiritual, almost new age, like the tablas on S.O. and sitar drone on 8. OnInner Song, that meditative quality comes less from instrumental texture and more from the actual form of the songs. Though she drifts across tempos and dabbles with a variety of drum patterns, loopsboth instrumental and lyricalprovide the records through line. On Wake-Up, lifes circular patterns are made explicit: Wake up/Repeat again/Again. Owens writes with clarity and simplicity, using her own voice as something like a synthesizer, processing a phrase and then repeating it as she sings subtle variations in timbre and tone. Her lyrics are, in their own quiet way, a celebration of the pleasures of solitude and self-love.

The framework of Owens sound may be familiar now, but plenty still surprisesparticularly an appearance from fellow WelshmanJohn Caleon Corner of My Sky. Like so many of her songs, the track swirls a handful of chilly synthesizers as it imperceptibly rises toward a fully embodied emotional climax that reaches for the sublime. Cales fragile, weathered voice lends a different texture from that of the albums other tracks, though its underlying production is similar in tone. Toward the end of the song, Cale sings in Welsh, and it feels almost as if Owens is speaking through him to conjure the landscape of their homeland. Throughout, Cales words spin in mantra-like loops, becoming one with the programmed sounds that surround them.

For Owens, loopsboth electronic and lyricalare a grounding presence, like a chant uttered in a meditative state: a simple phrase or pattern that functions as a conduit to another world. WithInner Song, Owens seeks to take the listener to a place of healing, finding solace in the shelter of a repeated chord progression. (via Pitchfork)

Label: Smalltown Supersound
Format: 2 x Vinyl, LP, 1 x Single Sided (Etched)
Released: 2020
Genre: Electronic
Style: Techno

File under: House / Electro / Techno