Kelela Announces Hallucinogen EP, Shares Arca Collab “A Message”

Kelela Announces Hallucinogen EP, Shares Arca Collab "A Message"

Kelela has announced the Hallucinogen EP, a six-track offering intended as a bridge of sorts between her debut mixtape Cut 4 Me (which is getting a physical reissue soon) and her forthcoming debut LP, out this fall. It will be released on May 5. 

Below, watch the video for “A Message”, co-written with Arca. Directed by Daniel Sannwald, it’s shared via i-D.

Here’s what Kelela had to say about working with Arca:

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.

Read our interview with Kelela here.

Hallucinogen EP:

01 A Message
02 Gomenasai
03 Swoop
04 All The Way Down
05 Hallucinogen
06 The High

Watch Kelela perform “Bank Head” at Pitchfork Music Festival:

Correction: An earlier version of this story indicated that the EP would be released on Fade to Mind. There is no label set for this release.

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