- The Welsh producer makes a play for big-room drops, but her new album shines brightest when focused on body groove.
- It's easy to associate Kelly Lee Owens' textural music with wild Welsh topography. The DJ, vocalist and producer is from Saint Asaph, a small city in north Wales. "I know I'm home when I see the land rising," she told The Face in 2020 around the release of her second album, Inner Song, which captured her home's rugged beauty as atmospheric soundscapes.
On Owens' new album, Dreamstate, that dramatic image has shifted somewhat: less ancient rock formations and deep valleys, more hands-in-the-air trance at superclubs. Like Inner Song, Dreamstate is a record stemming from a process of looking inward. But on the latter, her soul-searching is communicated by bold synths and build-ups fit for huge dance floors. The album was partially inspired by the larger-than-life energy Owens experienced while supporting Depeche Mode on a stadium tour, where she regularly hurled spidery arpeggios and booming kicks to tens of thousands of fans.
On Dreamstate, Owens conveys the transience of clubbing through swathes of long, euphoria-building notes and looped trance-like refrains. Her immersive textures and sanguine lyricism speak to the romance of following your dreams and allowing yourself to slip into a hypnotic state on the dance floor. Owens has always been a daydreamer—her own mum used to refer to her daydreaming as "Kelly's world." Here, Kelly's world casts off any dark thoughts and lives above the clouds in unobstructed sunlight. The result is exuberant if occasionally overdone.
The trouble with Dreamstate is that it wants to conjure a sense of elation and giddy joy that can't really be forced. This strife towards a higher state of being means the album's vibe can feel overly distilled. Pure euphoria isn't something that can be packaged or bottled: take early singles "Love You Got" and "Sunshine." Both tracks swell with heavy synths, creating the same exaggerated, cookie-cutter sound you might expect from commercial dance music. Similarly, opener "Dark Angel" begins with a wash of pads and vocal layers that balloon into a trancey breakdown, calling to mind garish Ibiza staging, dry ice cannons and '90s classics like Paul van Dyk's "For an Angel"—but without any of the silly satisfaction. There's also the shuffling, melodic house of "Air," which loops with such one-note uniformity it wouldn't be out of place in a Keinemusik set.
The album thrives when it does less. "Love You Got" burns brightest during its stripped-back passages, where the listener can hear Owens' lush synth work or background falsetto stacking. "Time To," one of the album's more downtempo cuts, marries loose and smooth breakbeats with Owens' soaring head voice as she pleads to break away from what doesn't serve her. Another standout, "Rise," is made up of the twinkling arpeggios she crafts so well, all held up with light, skippy drums and luminous pads that capture how freeing the dawn hours can feel.
Ambient explorations and celestial melodies also form some of the album's best tracks: on "Ballad (In The End)," Owens' reverb-soaked topline is breathtaking over sweeping strings and tender words about "trusting in something bigger." Closer "Trust and Desire" drapes you in velvet and satin as Owens sings atop enveloping layers of synth, keys and strings. "I choose me, so completely," she says, almost whispering. Dreamstate's final minutes are a beatless love letter to the self, a moment of compassion among all the noise. The LP has opened a mesmerising portal into Owens' inner world. When she moves away from the overproduced big drops and focuses on body groove, Kelly's world is worth stepping into.
Tracklist01. Dark Angel
02. Dreamstate
03. Love You Got
04. Higher
05. Rise
06. Ballad (In The End)
07. Sunshine
08. Air
09. Time To
10. Trust and Desire