New York-based composer and producer Kelly Moran’s intricate, experimental pieces transcend the piano’s more traditional and classically-imposed school of thought. Her 2017 debut album Bloodroot was one of the most prominent experimental records of the year, with glowing reviews from The New York Times, Rolling Stone, and Pitchfork, and included on countless year-end lists across classical, experimental, avant-garde, and metal genres. So impressed was the revered producer Daniel Lopatin — known to most as Oneohtrix Point Never — by Bloodroot, that he immediately enlisted the pianist for his live band, and made her keyboardist for his global Age Of tour. Moran has since become a prolific collaborator to visionary peers including FKA Twigs as her live pianist, Yves Tumor, Kelsey Lu, and The Avalanches.
Following the success of Bloodroot, Moran signed with seminal electronic label Warp Records who released her album Ultraviolet. While Bloodroot thrilled primarily through feats of “prepared piano” compositions, Ultraviolet played to a wider, more arresting array of stylistic influences: dazzling inflections of jazz and dream pop, neoclassical and black metal, darkness and light, encapsulated in a single, mystifying LP. The album was again met with widespread critical acclaim for its arresting ability to conjure new worlds with the piano at its core.
On her forthcoming new album for Warp, Moran augments her pianistic abilities to superhuman levels in order to create a new strain of her singular experimental piano compositions. Hypnotic and emotive, the coming project solidifies Moran’s role as one of the leading contemporary composers for the piano, constantly pushing the instrument’s creative and sonic boundaries in the realms of classical and electronic music.
