LP:8 by Kelly Lee Owens | Album Review
The Welsh artist continues her exploration into the possibilities of Electronic Music — and it pays off
Kelly Lee Owens’ third album “LP:8” is fantastic.
Not only is it sonically intriguing — an often surprising, sometimes unsettling but always enveloping journey into a lovingly crafted world of sound. It is also artistically bold.
At least on the surface it can seem as if the style of the record is a departure from her previous work: much more quiet, much more introspective.
There are multiple meanings Kelly Lee Owens has given to the number “8” in the album title — some of them fairly mundane, some of them bordering on the kind of numerological flourishes usually reserved for analyzing Boards Of Canada records.
But the one explanation that helped me make sense of the album more than any other was that she approached her third release the way other artists would approach their eight — that is, from a position of power and independence, an artist who is so established and so beyond the dual need to fulfill and defy expectation that they can truly follow nothing but their own creative vision.
Kelly Lee Owens has succeeded in doing this on “LP:8”. It seems to be somewhat of a consensus among reviewers and fans alike that the new release is a sharp departure from the more upbeat, more “danceable” prior releases — the self-titled debut (2017) and 2020’s “Inner Song”. And while there is no doubt that “LP:8” is more on the ambient side of the spectrum, this is not an artist reinventing herself. It’s an artist doing whatever the heck she wants — which is exactly what makes this so amazing.
And as quiet as the rest of the album might be, it is bookended by two tracks that exude high energy and a sense of urgency. The opening track “Release” mainly consists of the word “Release” being repeated over and over again, after a time losing its meaning as a word and becoming part of the percussion. Closing track “Sonic 8” makes it clear that we are still dealing with a multifaceted, multitalented electronic artist here — and one who is absolutely unwilling to allow us more than a few minutes of believing we have figured out what she’s all about. Harsh, almost abrasive textures inspired by the worlds of noise and experimental music perfectly compliment her abstract and yet immediate vocals: “This is an emergency! This is a wake-up call!”
“LP:8” is one more chapter in Kelly Lee Owens’ still fairly young but already dazzlingly varied career. We’re in the presence of an artist steeped deeply in various traditions of electronic music, eager to explore every single facet of it with refreshing disregard for whether or not this is perceived to be consistent with her previous work.
I’m looking forward to her next eight releases.
