FEATURE: Spotlight: Kelly Moran — Music Musings & Such

FEATURE:

Spotlight

Kelly Moran

__________

I realise that I am a little late…

to the brilliance of Kelly Moran. The American composer, producer, and multi-instrumentalist based in Brooklyn released her album, Don’t Trust Mirrors, last month. I am going to finish this feature by sourcing a review of it. Before that, I think it is best to get to some interviews. You can buy Don’t Trust Mirrors here. Prior to coming to some interviews, here is some biography concerning a hugely accomplished musician that I have recently discovered:

“Kelly Moran is a pianist and producer who has spent her career excavating the sonic possibilities of the piano. An accomplished and highly sought-after composer, she has collaborated with an array of visionary contemporaries including FKA twigs, Yves Tumor, Kelsey Lu, Oneohtrix Point Never, and the Avalanches.

As a solo artist, Moran's critically acclaimed albums, Bloodroot (2017) and Ultraviolet (2018), have explored a variety of extended piano techniques like John Cage-inspired prepared piano and exercises in improvisation. Her unique strand of experimental piano compositions, which conjure hypnotizing textures and dramatic compositional arcs, have been included on year-end lists across classical, avant-garde, electronic, and metal genres.

In 2018, Moran was signed as a Yamaha Artist and began composing with Yamaha’s technologically-enhanced pianos, most notably the Disklavier player piano. Her releases Vesela (2023) and Moves in the Field (2024) showcase deeper sensitivity to the piano, with Moran merging her human restraint with the limitless possibilities of the Disklavier”.

I will get to some press from this year. However, there are segments of this Toneglow interview from last year that are especially interesting. A really deep and interesting interview that is quiet revealing and extensive, for anyone who has not heard Kelly Moran and previous albums such as 2018’s Ultraviolet and last year’s Moves in a Field, I would urge you to listen to them:

“What is significant to you about having an audience when you’re performing? What does it provide for you?

It does everything for me. It completely changes everything, and it makes everything feel so special because I’m not just doing something for myself. That’s a theme I’ve been thinking about a lot throughout the past couple years. As an artist, sometimes it feels very self-centered because I’m channeling how I’m feeling and I’m making art and I’m trying to express something. I used to tell myself that if no one listened or came to my show, it was just the act of making it that was what this was for, but I think that was a cope for thinking that no one cared about me. Once people started listening to my music and coming out to my shows, I started to realize it was about connection and communion in a room. I’m doing this thing for you; I’m not just practicing for myself. I’m making these sounds in real time for you.

I play a lot of festivals, and I hope this doesn’t come off like I’m knocking people who trigger sounds and don’t play instruments live, but I feel like there is something to be said for when we’re in a room together and I am making the sound for you. You are hearing me craft it from the attack to its release, and you’re part of it because I’m feeling the energy of the room and that’s when I know when to lift the pedal up or release from a song or when to give more. You feel everything together, and I think that this collective feeling is what gives meaning to art and makes it powerful. That connection is so important for me. And so that’s why it’s so disappointing on Instagram Live—you can’t feel that energy.

Do you approach playing the piano with a perfectionist’s mindset? Are you striving to be the best possible pianist?

Definitely not. I do think I’m more like that now than I was back then. When I was younger, I was very driven to play piano but I didn’t have stage parents who put a lot of pressure on me. No one in my family was a musician; I kind of randomly asked my mom for a piano one day after I saw someone play one on TV. She just indulged me (laughter). I’ve always been very self-motivated to make music and I think a lot of it comes from the fact that music is a form of self-soothing for me. I had some turbulent events in my childhood and I found a lot of solace in playing the piano. It wasn’t so much a drive for achievement or perfectionism or anything—it was just really fun for me. When I was about 12 years old, I got my first job playing piano as an accompanist for a voice teacher. I was making like $10 an hour, which is so much in 2001.

You mentioned earlier that you played piano and then played all these other instruments as well. Do you feel like playing these other instruments shaped the way you approach piano? Like, if you hadn’t played these other instruments, do you feel like that would’ve affected your relationship with the piano, or do you think that’s entirely separate?

That’s definitely not separate at all. I started playing the string bass when I was in fourth grade and it was just because our orchestra needed a bass player and I was really tall, so I was like, sure (laughter). You can bow a double bass, and I remember eventually realizing, “Oh, I can also bow inside a piano.” There are certain things you learn with instruments that translate to others. Like, learning how to do harmonics on a string instrument helped me to do harmonics on the piano.

It’s funny—part of the reason I collected so many instruments growing up is because I don’t have the longest attention span. As much as I loved music, I could never practice the piano for more than an hour and a half without taking a break or doing something else. I loved to play piano and then play clarinet and then play the bass. It was fun to mix it up. And because piano was such a solitary activity, playing these other instruments gave me a chance to socialize and play with other people. I played in rock bands with other people, or played in symphony band and orchestra in school. It can be really isolating and lonely to be very serious about an instrument when you’re young. It’s not like you have to, but I ended up spending a lot of time by myself playing piano”.

I want to come to an interview with The New York Times from last year. We learn how Kelly Moran introduced the prepared piano (a piano whose sound is altered by placing objects like screws, bolts, rubber erasers, or paper between and on its strings) to a whole new audience. When personal upheavals hit, she then abandoned it and found a new voice. This is what Grayson Haver Currin writes In his header of the interview. There are some sections of the interview that caught my eye:

“Moran stumbled into her breakthrough, “Ultraviolet” from 2018, during an acid trip while house-sitting for her parents. She had been wrestling with a difficult commission for the toy pianist Margaret Leng Tan and needed time out of mind. She swallowed three hits disguised as SweeTarts and romped outside through the woods, and then sat down at her childhood piano — prepared with screws and bolts interspersed among its strings, in the simplified spirit of John Cage, so the notes would have mechanical attack but also seem to float.

“I had been so stressed, but this allowed me to flow,” Moran said, her silver makeup and Smashing Pumpkins shirt sparkling in the studio light. “My brain was organizing musical information in a completely different way. I’d finish a piece, laugh hysterically, and do another one.”

Those improvisations catalyzed Moran’s career, earning her a deal with the electronic label Warp and making her a rising experimental star. The ecstatic inquisitiveness and anxious honesty of “Ultraviolet” helped introduce the prepared piano to new audiences. In 2019, she even joined FKA twigs’s acoustic band.

Moran was first paid to play when she was 11 as the accompanist for a hometown vocal instructor, and it made her realize her calling as a professional musician. After studying piano and composition in Michigan and California, she returned to New York and strung together gigs as a dance accompanist while playing in rock bands (including Voice Coils, alongside Mitski) and investing in the city’s burgeoning noise and metal scenes. (“Black metal is just Minimalism for guitars,” she said at one point, laughing.

With the acclaim of “Ultraviolet,” though, Moran was now jet-setting across the globe, playing major festivals by day and dancing to techno by night. She hoped to funnel the pops and plinks of her prepared piano into uncanny dance tracks, its idiosyncrasies radiating inside rhythmic loops. “I wanted to have something people could move to,” she said.

But early in 2020, Moran realized she was stuck, personally and musically. Anticipating another year of touring, she bailed on her Brooklyn apartment and moved in with her mother as her parents were preparing to divorce. The pandemic (and as a result, little income) meant she’d be staying. As a child, Moran’s relationship with her mother was fraught, so the piano had become not only a harbor but her way to be heard”.

Prior to coming a review for Don’t Trust Mirrors, there is one more interview worth getting to. One from this year. Coinciding with the release of her extraordinary new album, Moran spoke with Last Donut of the Night about figure skating, working with Bibio on her latest album, and working out her comfort zone. I am compelled to follow Moran, as I have missed out on her so far and Don’t Trust Mirrors struck me in a way that made me want to discover as much as possible and pass her music to others:

“Let's talk more about the financial realities of being a musician for you.

Prior to COVID, I remember being really cocky and being like, "Damn, this rules. I'm gonna be able to be a touring musician and make bank this way. This is great." I got humbled just a few months later when all that dried up. Things have definitely come back—festivals and everything are a thing again, musicians are able to tour—but the cost margins are just so difficult because flights are more expensive. We have inflation in the U.S. Hotels are expensive. In general, everyone I know right now is struggling financially, so that also applies to when people are tightening their wallets and if they're spending money on shows or music. People really don't buy records the way that they used to, so musicians have to come up with ways to trick people into paying us for our work through merch or live shows.

I have to keep being savvy about keeping myself afloat, and the past year has been probably one of the most difficult years for me, because right now I'm living alone in New York City. I'd been living with my best friend and her son for a year and a half, but I had to move out because he needed to take my bedroom and I ended up moving out a lot earlier than I thought I'd have to. It's been incredibly financially difficult for me, because now I'm paying twice as much in rent as I was—and New York rents are not very freelance-artist-friendly. I'm also a single woman, so I'm not splitting it with anyone and I'm trying to pay my rent on my artist gigs.

Talk to me about working with Bibio on this record.

I've been a huge fan of Bibio ever since I was in college. He's been one of my favorite artists, like, ever. When I got signed to Warp, he was one of the first people to reach out to me and be like, "Hey, welcome, your music is great." And I was like, "Oh my God, I love you." We started this really adorable email friendship—a million messages in the thread. We both love cats and we nature, so we have a lot in common and have very similar sensibilities.

When I played End of the Road in 2019, I hit up Stephen because I had a little gap between my shows, and he was like, "Oh, if you're ever in the area, you should visit and come stay with us." So I ended up staying with him and his lovely wife for three or four days at the English countryside. He was like, "I bought this cottage with the money I got from this Apple sync, and hopefully something like that happens to you." So it was very aspirational, being at his home”

I will finish with a positive review from CLASH. Those who have reviewed Don’t Trust Mirrors have shown such praise and affection for it. If you have not heard this stunning artist and composer, then go and listen to her music. It is great that she is going to play in London on 5th and 6th February. It will be wonderful to have her in the capital, where she will be given such a warm welcome:

“Kelly Moran’s remarkable artistry flows through a series of groundbreaking albums, with her prepared piano techniques allowing her to conjure heady, techno transformatives and crushing metal sounds in equal qualities. A vivid, often beautiful composer, her fascinating work reaches a new apex on ‘Don’t Trust Mirrors’, an assured work framed engrossing ideas.

The arpeggiating pulses that open ‘Echo In The Field’ feel as though you’re immersed in a techno rave, the rivulets of sound coalescing then disrupting. The crunching chords that slice through these beatific passages carry a kind of rock adjacent weight, a heaviness that her chosen instrument isn’t often asked to conjure. It’s a bold opening statement, quietly moving in its patient assertions of beauty.

The piece sets the tone for the album as a whole. There’s a questing spirit to Kelly Moran’s music, one that imbues ‘Don’t Trust Mirrors’ with a heady sense of energy. ‘Prism Drift’ is all sharp edges and percussive ticks, while the church bell tones of ‘Sans Sodalis’ open up into something truly moving.

‘Lunar Wave’ and ‘Chrysalis’ are potent examples of audio world-building, Kelly Moran’s painterly approach trusting each note to play its role. There’s a real drama to these performances, the sense of an artist pushing themselves further and further. Transformative and often moving, pieces like ‘Above The Vapours’ have a perfume-esque quality, an arresting formlessness that pours out of the speakers.

‘Don’t Trust Mirrors’ features Warp labelmate Bibio, and the track balances two spirits propelled by curiosity. Indeed, in spite of its cerebral nature there’s often a playful quality to ‘Don’t Trust Mirrors’ – ‘Systems’ is a tinkling waterfall of sound, while closer ‘Cathedral’ offers a place of solitude, re-framing Kelly Moran as an avant-garde anchoress.

An artist on a real creative roll, this is Kelly Moran’s second full length project in 18 months. Where some peers may let quality control dip, the American pianist has instead doubled down, re-establishing her creative boundaries in the process. A hypnotic experience, ‘Don’t Trust Mirrors’ is a record to lose yourself in”.

I will wrap up now. Two albums in as many years, you do wonder what will come next year. Someone whose true voice and creative is in full flow, I do love how her sound has evolved and how influential she is. I know there are so many composers and pianists coming through who will look up to Kelly Moran. She makes such transfixing, absorbing and beautiful music that is so individual and original. A rare talent we should behold, the fantastic Kelly Moran is a…