My expertise in the field of astrology is, admittedly, pretty limited. Which is okay, since this blog isn’t actually about astrology. One of the few things I do know about stars-n-signs, and it was an early discovery for me, is that sharing a sign with two close relatives was cause for a lot of familial friction in my childhood home. Something else I know is that due to some twist of the constellations I seem to attract, and get along famously with, Pisceans, particularly those with a very specific birth-date. Luckily they’re not-so-difficult to live with, and their artistic nature is more than compatible with my obsession with all things musical.
Being so closely aligned with fishes though means that any time I come across a song about water or fish it will invariably remind me of them. And if they hear it themselves they’re very likely to develop an affinity for it, or at least demand it be restarted from the beginning so they can pay it closer attention. Such is the case with Ex-Aquarium, an aquatically-themed instrumental LP from London-based electronic musician Kel McKeown, perhaps better-known as Kelpe, his not-exactly-oceanic beatmaking alias. The first time I had the chance to sit down and listen to it there happened to be a Pisces within ear-shot and, unsurprisingly, the album’s intro — a minimal track titled “Under” based around an extended vocal sample detailing underwater life — almost immediately garnered an affirmative shout of “that’s what’s up” and a request for me to “bring that back” from them.
After hearing “Under” a second time I was finally able to immerse myself fully in Ex-Aquarium’s watery soundscapes when the album’s second number, “Whirlwound,” a creeping, drum-heavy head-nodder covered in synths as squiggly as any sea-weed forest or be-tentacled underwater life-form, poured through my speakers. The song’s menacingly heavy drums, metallically reverberating snare rolls, bubbling cymbals, dramatic keys and sinewy synthesizers did more to create a feeling of under-sea darkness, dread and wonderment than the gull sounds or sea-shanty acoustic guitar loops that round it out ever could. In fact, it’s the dubby electronics used here — which one might normally associate with attempts to sound space-aged or futuristic — that set the stage for what’s to come on the rest of the album; a Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea-style adventure on a beat-powered-submarine — replete with engine-hum basslines, hull-tapped percussion, pings, beeps, warbles, gurgles and other strange electronically-created sounds — that would make Captain Nemo proud.
Kelpe “Whirlwound”
The ease with which Kelpe manages to cultivate visions of sea-floor exploits while remaining rhythmically funky and melodically improvisational — particularly on tracks like “Shipwreck Glue,” “Yippee Space Ghost,” “Skylla,” “Colours Don’t Leak” and “Cut It Upwards” — reminded me a great deal, stylistically and thematically, of the way Bob James did the same on his much-sampled tribute to Jules Verne’s fictional submarine “Nautilus.” Even if Kelpe actually sounds more like a mash of Prefuse 73, Black Moth Super Rainbow, Flying Lotus, Stereolab and Justice than he does the legendary ivory-tickler.
- El Keter