Kllo: Maybe We Could | 4ZZZ Brisbane 102.1FM

- Maybe We Could, sure, why not? It’s never been difficult for Kllo before. Or has it? After a bunch of years banging out quiet, ambient house with tinges of UK garage and US r’n’b in an efficient manner, I hear the Melbourne pair nearly didn’t make their new record at all. Off the back of a year touring LP one, Backwater, they were in the studio in late 2018, but somehow came a cropper and that was very nearly that. To draw an analogy from their music, there’s a subtle but undeniable longing that permeates the background of every bit of Kllo’s work. Like that, maybe Simon and Chloe thought they could be apart, doing their own thing, only to find themselves just as quickly back together for Maybe We Could. Yeah, maybe we can after all.

The (soft) drama makes you want to listen forensically to the Kllo sound and look for any stylistic kinks or sudden u-turns. Are there? Well, sort of. Backwater was a move to a bolder, more upfront style for the duo. Whatever genre blend they engage in, there’s always been a balance between the beats: be they tech-house, garage, two-step, even trap on the one hand versus the ethereal pads and Chloe Kaul’s gentle vox on the other. It wasn’t hard-house, but that last album marshalled its courage (maybe taking its lead from that large-sized old single Bolide), put the beats forward and imagined what it would be like for Kllo to do some deep house anthems. After that, in 2018, there was that standalone single, Potential, with its soulful r’n’b and piano-bar adornments - quite a different thing. Similarly there was the moody sound of Candid, followed by the positively sparse Only Existence paired with the cute garage bounce of Final. I suppose these were fragments of the album that might have been and they show Kllo thinking still more about where they might go.

What does that mean for the new album? What you might expect: Maybe We Could is a bit of a stylistic flipbook, taking all the styles and fusions of style that Kllo have worked, across the course of their career and working them into the mix, here, somewhere or other. Just to use the opening of the record as an example, it begins with Cursed, fusing a subdued tech-house to garage vocal samples and Chloe’s mournful, lovelorn vox. Still Here amps it with a frisky UK garage beat, which is a real contrast to the track’s singer-songwriter piano and vox - it’s almost like two different songs passing in the night. Insomnia flips it again, into trap r’n’b with Chloe rising to the occasion for a more diva delivery, with some multi-tracking giving her appropriate reinforcement. “If you want this too, I do” she sings. Thanks, I’ll take it.

That characteristic Kllo hesitancy occasionally evaporates as they get into the swing of things on cuts like My Gemini or the energised Somehow. So too with the big r’n’b of 1 Up: it’s as close Kaul ever comes to a breakout diva sound. These moments make you appreciate the hypnotic lulls that take you back to the most classic Kllo refrains, like A Mirror or the album’s title-track.

When I went back and listened to the earliest moments of Kllo’s back-catalogue, those first couple of EPs, I was a little surprised to discover how well they gelled with where they’re at now. Simon Lam was already an accomplished producer at that point and his fascination with oldschool two-step has endured. For all that Maybe We Could casts its gaze back over the entirety of the Kllo catalogue it doesn’t really go further. Which is not a problem: after the angst of arriving at album number two they’re in a place that has always been figured in their sound. Moody and reflective they look wistfully back on what’s past. Maybe We Could just do it all over again.

- Chris Cobcroft.
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