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Music

Kelora's Video "BOY" is a Beautiful but Nightmarish Vision of the Modern World

Putting a digital spin on folk songwriting, the Glasgow-based duo make music that reflects the sociopolitical reality of today: melancholic, fragile, and stormy.
Emma Garland
London, GB

If you Google "Kelora" you'll mostly find a lot of reports from niche news sources about a Danish company that keeps trying and failing to slap every e-commerce website in existence with a patent lawsuit. However, Kelora is also a Glasgow-based duo of Benedict Salter and Kitty Hall who are putting a digital spin on folk songwriting in a style we're going to go ahead and call 'Nu-Celtic downtempo'.

We're premiering their video for "BOY" below – a rainy day lullaby that brings to mind the following images: The Wicker Man but in an urban setting, David Gilmour endlessly riding the night bus, that sort of thing. "We want 'BOY' to present a nightmarish vision of the world today," they tell Noisey over email. "In general we want the music to reflect the political and social reality of today: diminished, melancholic, ominous, brooding, fragile, stormy etc."

Filmed on their phones, the video collates footage taken walking or riding the bus around Glasgow at night interspersed with eerie shots of them standing on a dark, blustery beach in hi vis jackets like two fisherman having an existential crisis. It brings a surreal and lingering sense of urgency to a climate where the general reaction to discomfort or disaster is to close one app and open another. "BOY" sticks with you - as well it should.

Watch below.

"BOY" will be released through Kelora's own label CALX as a 4 track EP. It's physical form will be a limited edition glow in the dark screen print containing a scratch off strip with a download code on the back. Catch them at their launch party on November 18 at the Pipe Factory in Glasgow or at Kamio in London on December 6​.