Kllo
A Melbourne electro-pop duo of Chloe Kaul and Simon Lam, whose debut Backwater (2017) holds "Virtue".
Melbourne to Ghostly
Kllo, first spelled Klo, is the Melbourne duo of Chloe Kaul and Simon Lam. Kaul wrote songs on acoustic guitar as a child, and Lam studied jazz drumming and turned to electronic music. The duo began when Lam recorded Kaul playing a folk song, turned it into an electronic track and sent it to her. They first played together at a family birthday party. In 2014 the single "Make Me Wonder" went on a blog before the songs were finished and led to a manager; the Cusp EP came out on Dot Dash on November 14, 2014. The spelling changed after they learned that Klo is German slang for toilet, which they discovered on a European tour.
Ghostly International emailed their manager, and the deal was made at Primavera Sound. The Well Worn EP followed on Ghostly on August 5, 2016, with the lead single "Bolide", named for bright-burning meteors. Lam first met garage through Four Tet's Fabriclive mix and told Nylon that Australia doesn't really have a strong history of electronic stuff. Their Backwater-era sound combined UK garage and lo-fi drums with Kaul's vocals; Lam said: there's no booming 808, and it leaves nice room for vocals.
Backwater and after
Backwater came out on October 20, 2017 (46:08, produced by Kllo). Much of it was written on tour in hotels and Airbnbs; Kaul captured ideas on a basic microphone and re-recorded them in a studio, and Lam mixed it after the tour. The Line of Best Fit says ten days of mixing and XLR8R says ten songs in seven days. Kaul explained that a backwater is a still part of a current-fed body of water, reflecting her stagnation during a period of change. Metacritic scored it 76 from eight reviews: The Line of Best Fit gave 8.5, The 405 7.5, Paste 7.5, Clash and Exclaim! 7 each and Pitchfork 6.3. Junkee ranked it ninth of its best albums of 2017.
The second album, Maybe We Could (July 17, 2020, Ghostly, with the lead single "Still Here"), is more restrained; Kaul said: now we're sitting where it feels comfortable to us. Metacritic scored it 65. "Affection" came on December 8, 2023, with remixes by DJ BORING and Jacques Greene. A European tour in October and November 2019 ran from Moscow to Utrecht.
Albums
- Backwater 2017 · Ghostly International / Different
The debut album: twelve tracks written largely on tour.
Songs
- Virtue Backwater · 2017
The first single from Backwater, released on July 12, 2017, with a rave-themed video.
Sources
- Kllo, Wikipedia
- Backwater (album), Wikipedia
- Kllo band crush, Nylon
- How Kllo are very politely taking over the world, i-D (2016)