Kelly Lee Owens: “I’m looking for the point where pop and dance come together”
3 important DJ/producer albums are released on Friday: The Blessed Madonna, reaching the mainstream after a long career in clubs and after radio successes; LP Giobbi, who released “Dotr” combining psychedelic roots with beats (here is our interview from last year – in the meantime she has become a star on the circuit) and then there is Kelly Lee Owens who released “Dreamstate”. the success of Charli of thousands of tickets evaporated in an instant.
But all that glitters is not gold, literally, according to Kelly Lee Owens: “I would like to have greater transparency in DJ and live offers for men and women at the same level – until everyone is paid equally for their time and their energy, women will never be able to truly grow in this space,” she explains to Rockol.
Who is Kelly Lee Owens
Welsh of origin, deeply rooted in the English electronic scene with collaborations with Jon Hopkins and Daniel Avery – after having opened concerts for Depeche Mode (who take great care in choosing their supporters), Kelly Lee Owens is also approaching a more mainstream. “Dreamstate” is his work closest to the song form, after more electronic albums in the strict sense such as “LP8” from 2022 and above all “Innersong” from 2020, released in the midst of the pandemic and which even more courageously opened with an IDM version of “Arpeggi” by Radiohead and which contained a collaboration with John Cale. “If I hadn’t made ‘LP8,’ I might not have been able to make this record. There’s a point where pop and dance meet, it’s always been something that’s interested me and now I thought it was the right time to start exploring it properly,” he says.
From IDM to pop
The album contains collaborations with Bicep and Tom Rowlands of the Chemical Brothers. He sees the theme of the meeting between different worlds, starting from the cover photo, taken in analogue and digitized, in which Owens appears in a green field – nature – but with a high voltage pylon, technology, in the background: “ I wanted to visualize my way of combining different influences. This is also my first color album cover, which intentionally signifies a new era for me,” he says.
Even the title is decidedly more pop: being in a “dream state” means “taking time to daydream, something extremely important and underestimated in our society. A celebration of the present moment and all that it contains, both light and darkness,” he says.
The album was worked between London – where most of the electronic scene it comes from moves – and Los Angeles, and in between there was the experience of opening for tour dates for Depeche Mode, the godfathers of electronica contemporary: “One of the best of my life so far,” he says. “Playing every night in front of tens of thousands of people made me feel at ease, a great exchange of energy, the band’s fans are very generous, as well as them and those who work with them.
The electronic scene today
If Kelly Lee Owens is skeptical about the diminishing machismo of the electronic scene, she is instead more optimistic about the state of the scene in general: “Electronic music is very pop at the moment, but there are still a lot of emerging and underground artists who are building something social I just heard about Jackmaster’s passing – I didn’t know him personally, but when you’re a DJ or producer there’s a sense of community and we all feel the loss.”
And she is also convinced that Charli XCX’s success can give a good boost: “She’s a great talent, she deserves everything she’s getting, but I imagine she also has a lot of pressure.
Personally, I would like my music to reach as many people as possible and influence them in a positive way: the goal is to make people feel strong.”