Hometown: Melbourne.
The lineup: Simon Lam (production) and Chloe Kaul (vocals, keyboards).
The background: Is garage the new garage? We say that because a few weeks back we were singing the praises of Conducta, a Bristolian in thrall to MJ Cole et al, and now here are Kllo – formerly known as Klo – two cousins from Australia bringing back the sound of young Britain circa 1999-2000. Their music has many of the hallmarks – sweet melodies and siren-sighing over skippy rhythms – of 2-step, although that’s not all they do. In fact, they’re soulful one minute, electro-poppy the next. They could go in several directions: record a neo-UK garage album, or make an album that covers the stylistic waterfront and changes from track to track. But it’s their UKG-ish tunes that are especially beguiling, recalling the extreme-melodic end of things, the likes of Artful Dodger, Craig David and Sweet Female Attitude. As retro-garage exponents go, it’s as exquisite as early AlunaGeorge, with extra experimental flourishes to prove their underground credentials.
Chloe Kaul was flitting between acting and music and her cuz Simon Lam was studying sound engineering when they decided to establish a working partnership. Their first EP, Cusp, did well on the iTunes Australia electronic charts, received millions of Spotify plays and saw them play festivals around the world. That first EP featured Make Me Wonder, evincing a slower form of synth-soul music that got picked up by Radio 1. The follow-up, False Calls, was a superior electronic ballad while Under Lie saw Kllo ranked as Hypemachine’s #2 most blogged artist. It was their first foray with a vaguely garage pace but really it was as much a torch song with a rhythm, hinting at a future solo career for Kaul even if really she works best not out front in the mix, but subsumed by her cousin’s high-gloss hooks.
The new EP, Well Worn, demonstrates this effectively. Opening track Walls to Build represents a considerable advance in terms of production, arrangement and adherence to the UKG creed. It’s epically pretty, with Kaul swooning “Forwards ... reasons I can’t explain.” We hesitate to call it a chorus – it’s more a gush, a rivulet of rapture. Bolide is the lead track, with over 600,000 plays on Spotify two weeks into its release (the EP itself comes out this summer). Turns out that “bolide” isn’t a synonym for ethereal beat-mastery but another word for meteor flash. It’s hard to make out what Kaul is singing but at a guess it concerns loss of self in the face of natural beauty. Either that or they got wasted one night at a club and hallucinated a fireball (apparently they played their music to Chloe’s mum and she decided it sounded “like ecstasy music”). Meanwhile, Lam obviously knows his way around a laptop, layering the harmonies to lovely effect. The slow, somewhat stoned Sense veers towards the hazy, gauzy R&B of Nao or RZA. On My Name opens with piano notes, hiss, dubstep wubwub bass and a looped female voice repeatedly crying “baby”. Finally, Don’t Be the One is depressed, decelerated 2-step with a relationship-analysing lyric: “Moving on to something we knew ... ” These are love songs that use pop tropes and pay tribute to electronic music-making of the last decade and a half. We can’t wait for the album.
The buzz: “Dreamlike electropop.”
The truth: The best Australian facsimile of UKG ... ever!
Most likely to: Achieve ecstasy.
Least likely to: Take ecstasy (in case Chloe’s mum’s reading).
What to buy: The Well Worn EP is released in August by Ghostly International.
File next to: New Portals, AlunaGeorge, Sweet Female Attitude, Conducta.
Links: facebook.com/klomusic/
Ones to watch: Globelamp, Colour, Muna, demo taped, Charlotte Day Wilson.
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