Kelpe

Kelpe is the recording alias of London-based electronic artist and producer Kel McKeown. Growing up in the university town of Loughborough, England, McKeown first began experimenting with music as a teenager, using a Commodore Amiga home computer and a sampler to make rudimentary rave beats in the early '90s. Though he played in a few teenage bands, music drifted to the wayside for a time and he didn't actively begin his career until after university when a friend convinced him to submit a demo to London-based label DC Recordings.

Inspired by electronica acts like Prefuse 73, Boards of Canada, and artists on the Warp label, he was signed to DC, who released his first 12" EP People Are Trying to Sleep. He quickly followed up with his debut album, Sea Inside Body, which received rave reviews from prominent publications like Wire.

Continuing to evolve his fractured mix of found sounds, samples, and woozy electronics, he released a second LP, Ex-Aquarium, and a third called Cambio Wechsel for DC, in addition to several more EPs. Around this time he also began remixing tracks for a variety of other artists like British instrumental band Red Snapper and French electronic pioneer Jean-Jacques Perrey. In 2013, he founded his own label DRUT and in 2020 released two albums Run With the Floating, Weightless Slowness and If Not Now When.