In the beginning, Kelela aspired to sound like a remix. The artist once said that her interest in the form came from the attention to detail in UK garage and 2-step reworks, as well as the potential they offered to beam a singer’s vocals into radically new contexts. Together with her collaborators, Kelela sought to transpose the sensuality of R&B onto hard-hitting but finely crafted dance beats, mapping sleek hooks onto blasted-out electronics. The word most critics used to describe her music was “futuristic,” but in hindsight, her early recordings seem emblematic of a current of creativity that crackled in the air throughout the 2010s: one that was musically omnivorous, ultra-tactile, conceptually heady, and internationally minded. To revisit interviews published around the time of Cut 4 Me’s release is to encounter a world of cross-genre optimism, fueled by dreams of forging new connections across Black and queer club scenes worldwide. Back then, Kelela was the diva uniquely poised to bring those sounds to a wide audience.
Fast forward 10 years. Kelela now exists among the upper echelons of stars called “mother” online; she is lovingly teased by fans for her inability to find a weed plug or protect her Twitter account from scammers trying to sell PS5s. She is a senior figure in a landscape of young musicians drawing on regional club music to great success. Last year’s Raven demonstrated how fully Kelela’s sound had transformed over the last decade of her career, as speaker-rattling R&G had been gradually phased out in favor of vaporous ambience. These new songs had formed, pearl-like, around a kernel of pain and insecurity, a “rustiness” she attributed to feeling exploited for her voice. Having accomplished the difficult task of piecing together a fractured sense of self on that record, Kelela’s latest collection of remixes is both a victory lap and something of a memory trip. Apart from reminding us of her career-long talent as a curator and executive producer, it’s her most uniformly satisfying and adventurous remix collection to date.
In the past, Kelela remixes have traditionally split the difference between full-blown reimaginings and particle-collider deconstructions, with the latter tending to represent the more fun but overall weaker tracks in this category (think of MC Bin Laden’s Brazilian funk overhaul of “Rewind” or Divoli S’vere’s ballroom makeover of “Truth or Dare,” which were more compelling for their audacity than as actual pieces of music). RAVE:N, on the other hand, is distinct: Each track deepens the aqueous world of the original record. It seems inconceivable that “Contact” should work without its full-bodied Baltimore club pulse, but Karen Nyame KG manages to transform the song into something gorgeously weightless, placing Kelela’s vocals over an airy bed of synths and the faintest Afrobeat percussion, as if she were levitating. DJ Manny and Loraine James’ intricate drum programming adds some nervous ballast to their respective spins on “Divorce,” but the real magic lies in how they fold and layer the vocals so that the song’s depressive undertow and tortured thoughts come into greater conflict. It would be foolish to try and replicate the oceanic pull and release of the title track, so Agazero pitch shifts the singer’s voice and imposes a beat for the formidable Bbymutha to tear into, matching Kelela’s battle weariness with her own fierce resolve.
RAVE:N bears the distinction of being the most kinetic Kelela release in a very long time. Beats that once sighed now absolutely slap, as the singer’s creative partners excavate the record’s submerged drums and detonate them for all of their latent force. LSDXOXO’s rework of “Sorbet” flips the track’s barely perceptible thump, recasting the toe-curling bliss of her lyrics into a breathy dancefloor command to go harder and harder. SUCIA!’s take on “Bruises” is deceptively minimal, substituting the original’s prominent kick drum with idling piano, until the chorus launches into hyperdrive with an absolutely scorching drum break. As the blankest slates on the record, “Washed Away” and “Far Away” are the most remixed songs here, with Ethereal, DJ Swisha, Suutoo, and DJ LHC all imposing a ground floor of percussion for the singer (and guest vocalists Liv.e and Ms. Carrie Stacks) to mournfully and triumphantly scat over. However, each producer’s approach runs a little too parallel; they lose their distinction when placed next to each other.
What is most striking about RAVE:N is the feeling that Kelela has made good on her early hype as a futurist in the best possible way, through a clear influence on a legion of like-minded artists. A.G’s rework of “Happy Ending” features among the record’s very high points and could easily have slotted among the best of any of her previous releases. The producer colors the song’s headlong pursuit of romance with shadows, as the ecstatic, pitch-shifted vocals crest and recede over roiling waves of grime bass. Her version is musically inventive, emotionally attuned, and contains glimmering traces of Kelela’s music that go far beyond its source material. Like many songs on RAVE:N, it bridges “far away” feelings with an intimate understanding of the singer’s greater artistic project.
