Kelela - A Message (Produced by Arca)

Kelela has announced a new EP and shared a track off the project featuring production by Arca. “A Message” is Kelela’s first song since last summer, and is being presented via visual. It’s one of six tracks set to be featured on Kelela’s forthcoming EP, HALLUCINOGEN, which you can expect to hear in its entirety when it hits e-shelves on May 5. The EP will serve as Kelela’s first multi-track offering since dropping her acclaimed debut mixtape Cut 4 Me back in 2013, and as a way for the songstress to build up to her forthcoming full-length album. The narrative of HALLUCINOGEN is based on the tumultuous lifespan of a relationship, with “A Message” described as the “rejection and amputation” period. “A Message” initially took Kelela and Arca less than half an hour to cook up, while additional production and writing work was provided by Boots. The video for “A Message” is directed by Daniel Sannwald, a much-lauded photographer who has worked with the likes of Vogue, DAZED and more. You can check out “A Message” above, and read through a note from Kelela about the song and her meetings with Arca below.

I met Alejandro [Arca] on a boat in August of 2012. We sought one another out across a dance floor and within 5 minutes agreed to meet each other as soon as possible to collaborate. I had one song released to my name and had just heard one of his mixes, but we knew we’d found something in one another. We spent the next three days, 14 hours a day talking about our artistic visions and how it intersected with our personal lives, making songs that reflected that while dancing around the room to let it all out. About 5 or 6 demos were born out of these three days.

“A Message” is one of the demos that came from those sessions and it speaks to the despair that I was experiencing at the time. The initial version of the song spilled out of us in about 25 minutes. Since then, it’s been like a sculpture that I’ve come to and refined over time, adding a lyric here, refining a melody there, adding a bridge, etc. It’s a process that is now finally complete with its release and I’m so happy that I finally get to share it with all of you.