Kelpe – Valerian
Kelpe – Valerian (2015)
Directed by: Sagberg
Following the release of his album ‘The Curved Line’ last week, Kelpe has unveiled a new video for album standout track ‘Valerian’. Kelpe is set to play a London show on Sept 17th at The Waiting Room.
Directed by London-based Sagberg aka David Altweger, the ‘Valerian’ video is built from recordings of sound reactive visuals. Sagberg uses analogue source materials like film burns, scratches and grains as base materials, which he transforms into 3D environments, to create a landscape of otherworldly of planets & galaxies collapsing into one another.
A natural son and heir to Generation Warp and the fathers of Krautrock, Kelpe’s pioneering experiments in the early ’00s positioned him as one of many stylistic precursors to the arrival of LA’s now-sprawling beat scene. Much like scene-savants Prefuse 73 and Dimlite, Kelpe has remained an enormously respected stalwart of the fringes, always dabbling variously in sample-heavy beat-craft, oddball ambient, and – more recently – dancefloor-ready club grub.
Kelpe returned to grace his still-young imprint DRUT RECORDINGS with ‘The Curved Line’. It’s a record transfixed on tonality and texture – Korgs, Moogs and pocket pianos all feature heavily across the album’s rich palette. The exciting sonic bursts of his last effort have evolved confidently and blown out into soaring progressions and flowing structures – all evidence of a tireless producer gunning to out-do himself.
As ever, Kelpe presides over a delicate union of the electronic and the organic. ‘Chirpsichord’ is a neat embodiment of the album’s openers – a loping slice of soft bubbling arpeggios and shifting loops. ‘Calumet’ runs harder with the same themes – driving loops into a club headspace clapped with big drums and droning synths. The record pauses for breath here and there, shoehorning skittish sound experiments like ‘Red Caps of Waves’ and the delicately exotic ‘Morning Two’. After tosses and surprise turns, the album finishes dramatically on ‘Incantation’ – a thumping beat workout followed by a deep and whirring coda that seems only achievable if you’ve been noodling with sound hardware for over a decade.
