The thing about being dubbed a “post-genre” artist is that you can basically do whatever you want with random parts of sound in your art, and you’re never beholden to one form or another. You can also move in retrograde with them when the phases align. For Kelela, “idea 1” brings it right back to a new beginning for the R&B futurist. Few may recall that before she was rearranging rhythm and sonic waveforms through the soft force of her voice, she was once in a prog metal band before venturing solo.

With the first new original single since her second studio album, the deep dark dance pulsations of Raven, dropped back in 2022, she rekindles herself with the grissling sides of that past self. Just don’t mistake it for some kind of blatant nu-metal revivalism or shoegaze adjacency. That’d just be reductive at best. Instead, heavier riffs blade out from the corners of the listen, but as is the one constant at its core like an atomic particle, is the halo of Kelela glowing its way through the abrasions of a love in decay. “Bearing your cross, it’s your loss, now I’m jaded,” her voice ethers a tension of metal blade and lightning scourge. “Know it ain’t right / Don’t you look away.” Her magnetic force field knows no bounds, be it in sound or allure.

Directed by: 91 Rules

Kelela’s “idea 1” single is available now on Warp Records.