Kelly-Lee Owens is best known for her amorphous and esoteric approach to techno. Since the Welsh electronic musician and producer’s self-titled debut LP, each project has become increasingly metaphysical – with black and white album covers that shift in distortion alongside the music – culminating with the abstraction of the LP.8 series. In this regard, Dreamstate, her first album at new label dh2, is a remarkably diaphanous entry to the Owens catalogue – a much needed breath of air, breaking the surface from the depths of Owens’ ambitious creative experiments.
There’s a sense of liberation on Dreamstate, a freedom that comes across not only in the album’s sound, but approach. Breaking with Owens’ usual method of auteurship, this new project centres itself on collaboration, with the likes of Bicep and George Daniel joining Owens on the production credits. The result is a collection of euphoric and transcendent dance music, an effervescent mileage of 90’s trance and melodic techno that aims for the heavens at all times (track titles like Rise, Higher, and Air belie her commitment to this feeling).
Take the ascendant, triumphant symphony of synthesisers on Air – it’s a motif that occurs across most of Dreamstate’s track list, adding a buoyancy that matches Owens’ feather-lite vocals on songs like Rise, before crescendoing at this mid-album apex. It’s Owens like you’ve never heard before – but the hallmarks of her artistry aren’t betrayed. The esoteric ritualism of LP.8’s looped chants, and the electronic meditative states of Inner Song appear on the hypnotic looped chorus of Love You Got, and in the mantra-like qualities of the songwriting on Trust and Desire or Higher.
Dreamstate feels like a creative breakthrough for an artist who has been hyper focused on a specific methodology. In breaking free of the white cube, Owens has unlocked a light mode that feels like exactly the sort of creative risk she needed. It makes sense that Owens appears on the cover of this album in full colour, facing us head-on as blue skies expand above her.
