Kelly Lee Owens (live)

Even in the increasingly crowded field of electronic music, Kelly Lee Owens??? debut album arrives as a wonderful surprise. An album that bridges the gaps between cavernous techno, spectral pop, and krautrock??? s mechanical pulse, Kelly Lee Owens brims with exploratory wonder, establishing a personal aesthetic that is as beguiling as it is thrillingly familiar.

Before starting work on the self-produced, self-titled album, the 28-year-old Londonerturned her keen ear towards dance music after working with techno producer Daniel Avery in a local record store. You??? ll most likely have heard her voice and contributions on Avery??? s spectacular 2013 debut Drone Logic, lending her talents to its title track and ???Knowing We??? ll Be Here.??? Avery shows up on S/T as well with a co-write credit on the ghostly ???Keep Walking,??? a track from the Drone Logic sessions that recalls the sine-wave pop of late Broadcast singer Trish Keenan.

Owens??? album follows her two self-released white label 12???s and ???Oleic???, her debut EP release on Smalltown Supersound, in which she flexed her considerable muscle as a dance producer with four luscious, deeply satisfying slices of big-room electronic music. Appearing on ???Oleic??? through Owens??? rework of her track ??? Kingsize,??? avant-pop artist Jenny Hval also appears on S/T on the stunning ???Anxi,??? a track that shifts from drifting tones and distant vocals to warm squelches and tunnel-vision club beats. ???It has been my most freeing and open collaboration so far, and my first time working with a female???, Owens says of working with Hval. "It was a very powerful experience for me, I felt she brought something strange and quite beautiful.???

S/T is first and foremost Owens??? vision, a record that exudes a startling level of intimacy even in its largest-sounding moments - such as ???Arthur,??? a percolating mixture of looped vocals and rustling rhythms that rides on a perpetual near-crescendo. The song is a tribute to the late iconoclastic musician and kindred spirit Arthur Russell: ???He wrote music and stayed true to his vision up until the day he died, ??? Owens explains. ???He didn???t compromise as an artist, and those are the kind of people I look up to - people who know what they want.??? On S/T Owens translates that self-assertiveness into a record that explores a variety of moods - sadness, anxiety, darkly shaded ecstasy - with a trippy-eyed clarity and confidence that only bodes well for the future.