Kelly Lee Owens

★★★★ LP.8 SMALLTOWN SUPERSOUND. CD/DL/LP

Dark prognostications set to ethereal, hypnotic electronica.

A persistent, heavy throb punctuates the opening salvo of this windswept third album from Welsh sonic auteur, Kelly Lee Owens, like the threat of some oncoming monstrous fate. Recorded in Oslo with Lasse Marhaug – who’s worked across the experimental spectrum with the likes of Sunn O))) and Jenny Hval – together they paint things beautifully black. Release is an off-kilter industrial techno banger that hits with piledriving intensity, but the overall pace is sedate, if no less impactful. Owens’ softtoned

voice is to the fore on the eight-minute Anadlu (Welsh for ‘breathe’), a saturnine, ambient lament. Owens circles back to themes from 2020’s acclaimed Inner Song, such as her grandmother’s death on muted, neo-classical piece, Nana Piano. The planet’s own existential crisis seems key: “This is a wake-up call/ What you gonna do about it?” Owens intones over a Death Star alarm pulse on Sonic 8. Perhaps LP.8’s general air of foreboding is a manifestation of its creator’s concerns for humanity itself.