There’s been loads of hypothesis about Kelela’s whereabouts since her stellar debut album ‘Take Me Aside’ dropped in 2017, however the artist herself has remained tight-lipped. The R&B singer/songwriter first appeared like a chimaera when she debuted in 2013 together with her genre-hopping mixtape ‘Minimize 4 Me’, earlier than her cosmic 2015 break-up EP ‘Hallucinogen’ introduced syncopated digital beats to R&B alongside Arca (who’d go on to provide among the tracks on ‘Take Me Aside’). But right here, on her second album, Kelela strikes into new territory: sonically with a brand new group of collaborators, and thematically from earth into water.
On ‘Raven’, DJ-cum-producer LSDXOXO and ambient duo OCA (Yo Van Lenz and Florian T M Zeisig) show to be unbelievable belongings to Kelela’s quest for revolutionary sound. LSDXOXO will get to work on the album’s stripped-back membership music (‘Contact’), serving to Kelela craft a somatic 4D-experience behind a psychedelic nightclub, full with heavy basslines and downtempo shades that beg for communal end-of-the-night dancing. In Kelela’s extra ambient turns, nevertheless, OCA loop in granular textures of water (‘Washed Away’) that permit Kelela’s crystal melisma to glitter, crafting moments of serenity throughout the album that hone in on the facility of therapeutic.
The truth is, the theme of water takes form in numerous methods all through ‘Raven’. Starting with the opening lyrics which place her “far-off, washed away” proper via to the final second (“the rain that pours, and the floody nights”), water’s ephemeral nature guides the listener. It really works as a companion to Kelela’s questioning of the transient nature of life; how folks, locations and issues drift out and in as certainly does the ocean. Whether or not it’s in ‘Closure’, the place she pines over a brand new attraction, or in ‘Completely satisfied Ending’ the place she mulls over an previous love, connections which have come and gone are all a part of Kelela’s journey in direction of feeling alive once more.
It makes for a steadily breathtaking companion to ‘Take Me Aside’. In a debut album which was all about breaking down, ‘Raven’ reminds us of what it means to be put again collectively. Figuratively, we see this within the album’s steady movement: a telephone rings within the background of ‘On The Run’, just for the following music to be known as ‘Missed Name’. ‘Fooley’ ends with electrical reverberations crackling on the observe and waves pouring through which carry us via to the start of the next observe ‘Holier’, a shocking quasi-ballad at 0 BPM.
Because the album progresses we journey deeper into the depths of water, till one of many previous few tracks, ‘Divorce’, echoes the sounds of a submarine. By the album’s finish Kelela is actually submerged, “far-off” within the water and awash from the ache – prepared to start out anew.
Particulars
Launch date: February 10
Report label: Warp Information
