Bells and synth's precede the thumping bass of Kelela's 'Guns and Synths', the first track off her exciting debut album Cut 4 Me, a relative calm before a deep-pitched storm. Once the boom drops, her casual flow and distinctive, if slightly restrained voice, bounce off the rubbery low-end like a pinball, pinging from the right speaker to the left, into your eardrums and zig-zagging between your neurons.
This is exemplary bass music in 2013, with spare and echo-y percussion fighting for space in the track amongst the rawkus rumble of the bassline, with this beautifully nimble songstress cutting through it all with elastic, airy vocals and lyrics that move from anger to doubt to contentment to seduction.
LA producer Nguzunguzu picks up the pace on the second track 'Enemy', with post apocalyptic Timberland percussion partnering nastily with the bassline allowing Kelela to sound threatening without her ever actually having to be so.
She knows her way around a tune. However, lacking the twitter-ready antics and the musical maximilism of most of the current R&B fore-runners and also-rans, Kelela is forging her own path, and the musical (not just r&b) landscape in 2013 is better for it.
Producer NA laces 'Do it again' with a subtle, thrilling production that threatens to unleash into a Rihanna-like mega chorus, but instead opts to keep us in suspense before tumbling into a breakdown that falls just short of the dancefloor and peters out beautifully like the extended tease it is.
This feeds perfectly into the interstitial 'Go all night', a hot (and all too short) bass-driven number that could be a lost The-Dream track, if it didn't resist igniting and instead be content to ease away slowly into the night.
Kelela's leading falsetto drives the beautifully restrained Kingdom track 'Bank Head', which was for many the track that introduced her to the world. The tune kicks up for the second verse with double time drums and persistent handclaps, and Kelela's multitracked low and high pitched vocals weave in and out of each other and then merge seamlessly time and again to cast a hypnotic spell.
An insistent kick drum drives the title track, and Kelela use it's impact to great effect as an instructional tool, imploring her fictional partner to 'talk to me, give me what I need, would you please, breakdown'.
'Keep it cool' could've sounded corny, with it's bloops and barks, but Kelela finds her percussive flow amongst the chaos and easily navigates us towards the bass-heavy chorus. It's another 'banger', produced by yet another bass luminary in Jam City. To the casual fan, the producers names in this albums credits may seem like heiroglyphics, but in their genre they are all about as good as it gets. For Kelela to have been able to not only solicit tracks from each of these talented producers, but to also beautifully integrate her vocal with each of them, is somewhat of an achievement.
It also helps that the music sounds consistent over the course of the whole record, which is itself a rarity.
It's a pleasure to step into Kelela's world for a whole album, and it feels especially refreshing after a year full of twerking, roaring and pouring.
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