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Kelpe

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Location: Loughborough, United Kingdom

Website: http://myspace.com/kelpemusic

Bio: Kelpe is Kel Mckeown, from Loughborough, England. After tentative pre-teenage forays into cassette recorders and joke rap bands with friends, Kel devoted most of his ... (more) teenage years to bone splintering skateboarding mishaps before deciding that loops and samples might provide him with a safer past time than trucks and wheels. Despite adolescent attempts at computer music resulting in "crap rave efforts" made on a commodore Amiga, the process of sampling and sequencing provided him with a discipline and focus that is of fundamental importance to the creative process that he currently employs in the execution of his acidic but organic beat monsters.

Coming to the attention of DC Recordings in early 2003, his first release for label was the 12" EP "The People are Trying to Sleep", a wide eyed carnival of fractured beats and warped electronics. This was followed by the critically acclaimed album 'Sea Inside Body' (September 2004), an album described by The Wire as "One of the most engrossing listens in recent electronic music". In 2005 this was followed by bedroom discotheque 12" "Sunburnt Eyelids", and most recently double lp "Ex-Aquarium" (2008) and remix companion "Extraquarium" (featuring Zombie Zombie, Fulgeance, The Boats et al). In early 2008 Kelpe teamed up with ubiquitous drummer Chris Walmsley (Voice of The Seven Woods, Psapp etc) for a series of explosive live shows alongside Holy Fuck, To Rococo Rot and others. Kelpe has also began to show his skills as a remixer, re-working Red Snapper, THe Oscillation (DC), Eliot Lipp (Mush), Fulgeance (Musique Large) + Architeq (Tirk) among others.

With influences ranging from the bleeps & bass of classic Warp artists to the spectral folk of John Renbourn, and the minimalism of Steve Reich + Harmonia to the percussive space-scapes of Tortoise + Do Make Say Think, the diversity of the music that inspires Kelpe finds reflection in his own sonic adventures, informing his ever evolving sound, combining as map and compass to guide his lunar-bound b-boy throwdowns. (less)