Kelela’s 2017 breakthrough debut, Take Me Apart, was a masterful example of experimental R&B songcraft radiating from a fractured relationship. Ultra modern, sleek in its electronic design yet sizzling to the touch, even the remnants of broken emotions felt like they were still burning close to the surface. With RAVEN, her sophomore follow-up, Kelela simmers into a new form of matter by reclaiming her own personhood, resulting in a dualistic aura that recharges her impulses of lust and makes space for a quiet, balanced spirit. It’s one part dance album that redesigns the club in her own visions of trance and garage, and sees the self transcendent from it as well with her perspective as a Black queer artist searching for something beyond temporal fixes amid the sudden sensation. The ecstasy is purely psychedelic, elevating her conscious to a new high, and when those moments begin to dissipate into a particle lightness? They soothe and renew.

Highlights: “On the Run”, “Contact”, “Bruises”

Kelela’s RAVEN is available now on Warp Records.

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