Hit play on Kloyd‘s “Night Tales”, above, before we proceed. The song is such an earworm. The vocals from Kirsty Ferguson-Lewis (aka Kri) are the perfect match for the production, resulting in a Massive Attack/Hooverphonic style trip-hop throwback. It was on a Friday playlist back in November, and I don’t think a week has gone by without hitting play on that track since. It’s one of my favourite tracks of the last 6 months.
Which is why it’s weird that it’s taken almost three months for me to feature Kloyd here. Her EP from last summer, Høurglass, is in part an update to that classic trip-hop sound, with a couple of sultry and alluring downtempo gems like “Eye of it All”, featuring t l k on vocals:
Kloyd has been producing music for a while — streaming services have her music dating back to 2020 EP Reflection. Still, Høurglass sees Kloyd hit a different gear from even the 2023 release Chapters. She also has a broader reach: last summer, she put out a call for remixes that resulted in three separate releases on her Bandcamp page. Here’s one of the instrumental song “Sur”, remixed by Field Motion:
In this interview with Soho Radio, she talks about the process of recording the record and working with Imogen Williams to write the songs. She also discusses preparing full band arrangements of Høurglass for live performance. I haven’t been able to find any video of that yet – perhaps it’s still coming.
She also teases that she’s a looking forward to releasing a proper album that’s structured like a story, eschewing the every-six-week single release routine that so many modern artists adhere to. Høurglass shows that it’ll be one to watch for.
