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Kelly Lee Owens: Dreamstate review | Alexis Petridis's album of the week
The Welsh producer’s latest handbrake turn takes her from dark-hued ambience to hypnotic euphoria on her poppiest record to date
It may also be Owens’ most ambitious album in so far as it simultaneously attempts to function as mainstream pop music – centred on her vocals, which appear on virtually every track, albeit occasionally in wordless, sampled form – as well as to provide a beat-focused, small-hours club soundtrack and to work as a complete home-listening experience. This time, it feels telling that the guest list includes Tom Rowlands, who succeeded in straddling the aforementioned boundaries in the 90s as one half of the Chemical Brothers – there’s something of the duo’s trademark disorientating psychedelic shimmer about his co-production Ballad (in the End) – and Bicep, who achieved something similar just as Owens’ career was getting under way. Rather than stick a standard song structure over club-friendly beats, its tracks take a more holistic and involving route, fixing on hypnotic, endlessly repeated single vocal lines, allowing the music to build and shift around them, relying on chord changes and melodic instrumental hooks instead of big choruses.
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