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Feb 25, 2020 By Christopher Roberts Photography by Kim Hiorthøy Kelly Lee Owens

British electronic music artist/producer Kelly Lee Owens has announced a new album, Inner Song, and shared its first single, “Melt!,” via a video for the new song. Inner Song is due out May 1 via Smalltown Supersound. Watch the “Melt!” video below, followed by the album’s tracklist and cover art, as well as Owens’ upcoming tour dates.

Inner Song is the follow-up to Owens’ self-titled debut album, released in 2017 via Smalltown Supersound (it was one of our Top 100 Albums of 2017). In May 2019 Owens shared two new songs, “Let It Go” and “Omen,” with “Let It Go” making our Songs of the Week list. Neither song is on the new album. In December 2019 Owens teamed up with Jon Hopkins for the seven-minute long new song, “Luminous Spaces.” It was originally intended to be an Owens remix of Hopkins’ “Luminous Beings” but morphed into its own thing once the pair got into the studio together. “Luminous Spaces” was #1 on our Songs of the Week list and is also not featured on Inner Song.

Inner Song opens with a cover of Radiohead’s “Weird Fishes/Arpeggi,” from 2007’s In Rainbows, but Owens’ version is just titled “Arpeggi.” One song on the album features vocals from John Cale. Laneya Billingsley (aka Billie0cean) directed the “Melt!” video.

In a press release, Owens says creating Inner Song was “the hardest three years of my life…my creative life and everything I’d worked for up to that point was deeply impacted. I wasn’t sure if I could make anything anymore, and it took quite a lot of courage to get to a point where I could create again.”

The album’s title is borrowed from Alan Silva’s free jazz album of the same name from 1972. Owens says the title “really reflects what it felt like to make this record. I did a lot of inner work in the past few years, and this is a true reflection of that.”

“Melt!” is inspired by the climate change crisis. “I wanted to create something that sounded hard but with organic samples,” Owens says. “I felt those were great representations of what’s happening in the world, that every moment you’re breathing and sleeping, this is ​taking place.”

Read our 2017 interview with Kelly Lee Owens.

Inner Song Tracklist:

1. Arpeggi
2. On
3. Melt!
4. Re-Wild
5. Jeanette
6. L.I.N.E.
7. Corner of My Sky
8. Night
9. Flow
10. Wake-Up

Kelly Lee Owens Tour Dates:

Fri. Feb. 28 - London, UK @ Southbank Centre (DJ)
Sat. Feb. 29 - Milan, IT @ Contemporary Art Pavillion (DJ)
Fri. March. 6 - London, UK @ 6 Music Festival (DJ)
Sat. March. 7 - Graz, AT @ Elevate Festival (DJ)
Sat. March. 21 - Istanbul, TU @ Babylon (DJ)
Fri. March. 27 - Rome, IT @ Manifesto Festival (DJ)
Wed. May. 06 - Brighton, UK @ Patterns - Warm Up Show
Fri. May. 08 - Manchester, UK @ YES - Warm Up Show
Sat. May. 09 - Berlin, DE @ Pitchfork Music Festival
Wed. May. 13 - London, UK @ Rough Trade East
Sat. May. 23 - London, UK @ All Points East Festival
Sun. June. 14 - Dhërmi, AL @ Kala Festival
Sat. June. 27 - Perk, BE @ Paradise City Festival
Fri. July. 10 - Bilbao, ES @ BBK Live Festival
Thu. July. 30 - Amsterdam, NL @ Dekmantel Festival

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