40
Klein
ONLY
[Self-Released/Howling Owl]
Klein’s debut album ONLY was composed of 12 separate songs, but it flowed like a hushed litany of disembodied, psychedelic interludes. Moving hypnotically through taut, clattering R&B trashjams, janky rap-inspired beats, and brittle processions of ambient rumblings & speed-fucked tape-mangling, the London-born, Nigerian-English artist sought to give a little shape to the ethereal while teasing apart the material, all with a calm, fragile touch. A mark of hatred, a mark of worship: this here was divinity blemished with spit and grit, the sacred obfuscated, Drake in a wheelchair. Nearly every time the music would start blossoming into song, rot and decay quickly set in, delay and echo and pitch-shift effects devouring everything. Out of tune. Out of world. Out of time. ONLY felt too unwieldy, too bizarre, too detached to actually contribute to a devotional anything, but this was actually a baptism, a rebirth for someone we’re only just getting to know. Fucking gorgeous, this was.