leadlids
Philadelphia, PA | Established. Jan 01, 2017 | SELF
Music
Press
Drawing inspiration from Frank Ocean, Bon Iver, Tycho and FlyLo, Philly solo artist Cleo Kelleher crafts dazzling beds of processed vocals, minimal beats and moving instrumentation under the name Leadlids. The project’s debut EP nonsense showcases elements of all those aforementioned artists (all of whom are shouted out on Leadlids’ Facebook page), but it also boasts elements of experimental electronic music going even further back than the recent past. There’s the stark robotic tones of 70s Kraftwerk and the dystopian melodicism of 80s Laurie Anderson. I even note some early James Blake in nonsense‘s long, breathless pauses, but this is more intriguing for what it sounds like than who. These are meditations on isolation and solitude, and finding one’s place in that inverted space apart from others: “do you want to see what the world looks like at four in the morning,” go the entrancing vocals on the closing “just near.” “We can drive around with the heat on high and the windows down, taking in the sounds.” The Leadlids Bandcamp bio keeps the description super simple — “Cleo and their vocoder” — and that may be what we’re hearing, but Kelleher makes it work in dazzling ways. - XPN
Discography
Still working on that hot first release.
Photos
Feeling a bit camera shy
Bio
Cleo Kelleher started making music on a laptop with a cell phone as a microphone. Their musical style developed out of a fascination with complex layering and combining elements of acoustic and electronic music. They take inspiration from everything from Death Grips and SOPHIE to Aphex Twin and In Love with a Ghost. XPN's The Key describes their music as "dazzling beds of processed vocals, minimal beats and moving instrumentation." Cleo discovered a vocoder trying to piece together vocals for their song Balcony, after that it became the symbol of their sound. All of Cleo's music is made on their laptop in their bedroom. They work as their own promoter, producer, and writer.
Band Members
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