Album of the Month: Kelela ‘Raven’

Six years after her monumental debut LP ‘Take Me Apart’, Kelela’s voice hits as it always does, in whispery, diaphanous textures that carry an impossible emotional weight. This time around, however, she’s chosen not to wait for the remix album before dropping melancholic bangers, singing directly over hard-hitting breakbeats in rave-ready tracks produced by the likes of AceMo and LSDXOXO. When she’s not in full-on club mode, Kelela’s voice wades through languid atmospheres of synth, leaving rippling echoes in its wake. ‘Raven’ flits between the sweat of the dancefloor and the fog of the chillout room, channelling both in an aural manifesto of aquatic Afrofuturism.

Kelela’s brand of Afrofuturism on the record parallels the oceanic mythmaking of Detroit electro pioneers Drexciya. As the story goes, the Drexciyans built an underwater utopia after being born from pregnant African women left behind to drown during the Middle Passage. A Drexciyan line might be drawn connecting the stunning album artwork — a Black woman’s face floating amidst a monochrome sea — and the sonic narrative in opening track ‘Washed Away’. After three minutes of vaporous synths and impressionistic crooning (“The mist, the light, the dust that settles the night / The hope, the longing, fade away, blurry eyed”), the track submerges with a splash, the sound of bubbles muffling the music.