Kelpe

Kelpe is the recording alias of London-based electronic artist and producer Kel McKeown. Growing up in the university town of Loughborough, England, McKeown first began experimenting with music as a teenager, using a Commodore Amiga home computer and a sampler to make rudimentary rave beats in the early ’90s. Though he played in a few teenage bands, music drifted to the wayside for a time and he didn’t actively begin his career until after university when a friend convinced him to submit a demo to London-based label DC Recordings. Inspired by electronica acts like Prefuse 73, Boards of Canada, and artists on the Warp label, he was eventually signed to DC, who released his first 12″ EP People Are Trying to Sleep in 2003. He quickly followed up with his debut album, Sea Inside Body, in 2004 which received rave reviews from prominent publications like Wire. Continuing to evolve his fractured mix of found sounds, samples, and woozy electronics, he released a second LP, Ex-Aquarium, in 2008 and a third called Cambio Wechsel in 2009 for DC, in addition to several more EPs. Around this time he also began remixing tracks for a variety of other artists like British instrumental band Red Snapper and French electronic pioneer Jean-Jacques Perrey. In 2010, he left DC, releasing the Margins EP on the Black Acre label and the Chocolate Money EP on Fremdtunes, both of which received airplay from influential BBC DJ’s. He also began touring more, doing both solo sets and working with longtime collaborator and drummer Chris Walmsley (Psapp, Broadcast), playing throughout Europe, the U.K., and the U.S. In 2013, he founded his own label DRUT and released his fourth album, The Golden Eagle, in 2014. ~ Timothy Monger