- For an album called Ex-Aquarium, Kelpe's third long-player sounds remarkably like it's still under water. The fourteen tracks have a submerged sound that wibbles, squelches and nods along with a slightly stoned smile, never getting much above 90bpm. If you're into the inevitable comparisons then you'd probably liken Kelpe, aka Kel McKeown, to a mixture of Four Tet, DJ Cam, DJ Shadow and Boards of Canada – electronic, slightly folksy hip hop. There's no massive spread of influences like Flying Lotus but Ex-Aquarium is a likeable, if slightly limited, friendly little world where trees talk, it's always summer and the closest you come to harm is talking to a fish.
'Whirlwound' is where you see what Kelpe can really do. A neck cracking beat opens up into a satisfying drone of a bassline that's augmented by seagulls, stuttering drums and delicate guitar lines. It builds up before all the elements come together in the final minute of intense, slow grandeur that, as it's the second track, really builds your expectations. Nothing else, alas, lives up to it. The album sags with too many songs that, in a rare moment of inspiration, my housemate described as 'waking up music'. Especially towards the end, Ex-Aquarium strays into the same territory as Nightmares on Wax circa Smoker’s Delight – great if you have a spliff in your hand, underdeveloped if you haven’t.
Perhaps Kelpe should try something different: when he does, the results are great, like the deranged insistence of 'Bread Machine Bred', his only dancefloor-aimed track. Indeed Kelpe's music is, arguably, at its most lovable in its most eccentric moments: 'Sunken Centre' could be an unused skit outtake from Mr Scruff's 'Keep it Unreal', right down to the daft spoken-word dialogue about plants, pondweeds, water weeds and that perennial obsession of Señor Scruff, fish.
Tracklist01 Under
02 Whirlwound
03 Shipwreck Glue
04 Pinch And Flare
05 Stop Parching Yourself
06 Yippee Space Ghost (Sid Version)
07 Sunken Centre
08 Skylla
09 Bread Machine Bred
10 Silver Nutkin
11 Half Broken Harp
12 Colours Don't Leak
13 Cut It Upwards
14 Over