Kelly Moran on Figure Skating, Working With Bibio, and Getting Outside Her Comfort Zone

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Longtime Twitter mutual Kelly Moran has been making fascinating and enthralling music in the electronic realm for a minute now; you may have gotten hip to her work through the stellar sounds of 2018's Ultraviolet or last year's Moves in the Field, and next week (October 1, to be exact) she returns with another exciting new record, Don't Trust Mirrors. I suppose we should've talked about why you shouldn't trust mirrors, but not to fret—our hour-long phone convo earlier this month was extensive and wide-ranging, and I loved hearing Kelly's insights on a wide variety of topics. Read on:

Even though you've released a few things in this time period, the bio materials say this record was six years in the making. Walk me through that.
I got signed to Warp in 2017 and put out my record in 2018, and for all of 2018 and 2019, I was touring all over Europe. Part of it was touring with Oneohtrix Point Never, and then I did a lot of solo tours in Europe and music festivals. Usually I'd be booked earlier in the day because my set's a little more mellow, and once I was done I'd be like, "OK, time to party and have fun".

I was at End of the Road festival hanging out with Yves Tumor and watching Kelly Lee Owens, and I remember seeing her and everyone dance and have so much fun—and I was like, "God, I want to experience something like this with my own music." My music tends to be very meditative—sit-down music, good to listen to in a comfy chair and just let wash all over you. It's not really "Get up and dance" music. So getting to witness all these techno acts and go to these late-night raves really made me want to try making something with that energy. As someone who's always bound to a piano bench, it seemed like a fun challenge.

I started writing the record in 2019, because my A&R was like, "Hey, it'd be great if you put out another record in 2020 and kept your momentum going." I made it halfway through the first half of the record, and then COVID hit and my A&R was like, "Hey, so, no worries on delivering that record anytime soon." Everything had just stopped, and my gigs for that year dried up, so suddenly this fantasy of playing this dance music at festivals just evaporated and I felt like, "Man, the world that I wanted to create this music for doesn't exist anymore. I need to shift gears right now."

Being stuck at home, I'd been working with the prepared piano nonstop for a few years, and being trapped at home with these very familiar sounds made me be like, "I got to put this on pause and try something new." Luckily, I had the Disklavier at my house that Yamaha had loaned me—it was supposed to be a short-term loan, but they were like, "Hold on to that piano. We're not going to need it anytime soon." That's when I started working on the music for Moves in the Field.

I actually borrowed a lot of the melodic ideas from the pieces that I'd initially written for my electronic record. One of the first things I did was I made a piano version of "Sodalis" for a Disklavier, and then I was like, "This is a fun challenge." So I put that record on hold and went on a side quest with the Disklavier, which is when I finished Moves in the Field. After that, I decided I wanted to revisit this music and put it out as almost a companion record to Moves in the Field, because they really influenced each other a lot and they don't exist without the other. This album feels like it's the culmination of that project.

The constant that I've had through all of these projects is my creative director, who's my best friend from kindergarten. She's been overseeing all the creative designs for my campaign. I wouldn't have made this record without her. She was such a strong supporter and was like, "You need to put this out. You've got to do it." That's what motivated me to finish this project.

Let's talk bout your relationship with Yamaha. What goes into being a Yamaha Artist?
Back in 2017 and 2018, when I was playing keyboard for the OPN live band, one of the other members of our ensemble, Aaron David Ross, works at the Yamaha Artist Services in New York City as their in-house sound engineer, among other things.
We got to use their practice space for our rehearsals, and during one of our early rehearsals, Aaron was like, "Damn, you know Kelly, it would make so much sense if you were a Yamaha artist, because Yamaha is looking to sign more composers who'd be interested in working with their technologically enhanced pianos." In addition to making these beautiful acoustic pianos, Yamaha have a few models of pianos that are technologically enhanced—one of them being the Disklavier, a very modern version of the player piano that has a really insane level of sensitivity.
It sounds incredibly accurate when you record on it and then have it play back.

The other piano that they have is this piano called the TransAcoustic piano, which is also a MIDI controller and has transducers built into the soundboard. You can connect the piano to a synth, or any outside sound source that has MIDI or audio,
and you can use the piano keys as the MIDI controller to play it. The sound is being sent through the piano, so the speakers are inside the piano and it's picking up all the resonances inside the instrument. You can actually mix the acoustic piano sound with the electronic signal you're sending to it, or you can just play the piano with the electronic signal. There's a bunch of cool ways to work with it.

The tracks I did for the Warp 30 box set I recorded at Yamaha on the TransAcoustic piano, and when we did the show in LA at Walt Disney Hall, I debuted the piano there. It was a win-win situation for both myself and Yamaha, because they were like, "Hey, we're looking for some weirdos who want to mess around with these pianos"—and here I am, based in New York just dying to do that kind of work. They were like, "You can do anything but prepare the pianos," which was fine, because I was looking for some new ways to experiment with the piano anyway.

It's amazing. I basically have an agreement with them where, because I'm based in New York, I get to rehearse and record there for free. It's actually a huge part of the reason that I've stayed in New York City, because it's become incredibly expensive to live here, to the point where I'm literally starting to try to come up with other ways to supplement my income as an artist here. So having access to a free rehearsal space and a free studio is just so incredibly valuable to me. I work there a lot during the week.

Even for this tour, I've been using the space there even though a lot of the sets I'm doing are on a MIDI keyboard instead of a piano. I've been working in their main studio mixing everything. If i'm playing a show in New York City, Yamaha is very generous about providing a piano for my shows. Hopefully, eventually I'll be able to help them sell these instruments, because one of the goals of my relationship with them is to bring attention and awareness to these instruments that they have. Hopefully, universities or other people will purchase them and make them more widely available to people to use.

Let's talk more about the financial realities of being a musician for you.
Prior to COVID, I remember being really cocky and being like, "Damn, this rules. I'm gonna be able to be a touring musician and make bank this way. This is great." I got humbled just a few months later when all that dried up. Things have definitely come back—festivals and everything are a thing again, musicians are able to tour—but the cost margins are just so difficult because flights are more expensive. We have inflation in the U.S. Hotels are expensive. In general, everyone I know right now is struggling financially, so that also applies to when people are tightening their wallets and if they're spending money on shows or music. People really don't buy records the way that they used to, so musicians have to come up with ways to trick people into paying us for our work through merch or live shows.

I have to keep being savvy about keeping myself afloat, and the past year has been probably one of the most difficult years for me, because right now I'm living alone in New York City. I'd been living with my best friend and her son for a year and a half, but I had to move out because he needed to take my bedroom and I ended up moving out a lot earlier than I thought I'd have to. It's been incredibly financially difficult for me, because now I'm paying twice as much in rent as I was—and New York rents are not very freelance-artist-friendly. I'm also a single woman, so I'm not splitting it with anyone and I'm trying to pay my rent on my artist gigs.

I haven't really been rolling in the money this year, and I've really been putting a lot of hope and emotional and financial investment into the campaign. To be completely blunt, I just hope that this record performs better and finds a bigger audience for my past releases. I got some really good tour dates, and I'm hoping that I get a sync or a score deal or something—a more sustainable way. Because, right now, touring and playing shows is my greatest source of income, but it's also incredibly hard and exhausting. I really need to find something that feels a little bit more sustainable.

If next year I feel like I'm in really dire financial straits, I've been thinking about going back to accompanying part-time for dance classes in the city, or teaching piano lessons. I haven't really had the time to explore those options, because I've been really busy just planning out this campaign and putting a lot of work into my live shows.

Talk to me about working with Bibio on this record.
I've been a huge fan of Bibio ever since I was in college. He's been one of my favorite artists, like, ever. When I got signed to Warp, he was one of the first people to reach out to me and be like, "Hey, welcome, your music is great." And I was like, "Oh my God, I love you." We started this really adorable email friendship—a million messages in the thread. We both love cats and we nature, so we have a lot in common and have very similar sensibilities.

When I played End of the Road in 2019, I hit up Steven because I had a little gap between my shows, and he was like, "Oh, if you're ever in the area, you should visit and come stay with us." So I ended up staying with him and his lovely wife for three or four days at the English countryside. He was like, "I bought this cottage with the money I got from this Apple sync, and hopefully something like that happens to you." So it was very aspirational, being at his home. He has a beautiful studio there, and we spent a couple of days recording and playing music together.

I felt so privileged to actually get to see him play violin and guitar, because he's completely sworn off performing live. I actually begged him, "Can you please just come play our song with me at my show in London?" And he was like, "I love you, but no, I'm never taking the stage again." But when I was first working on that particular track, I felt like it needed a little something extra to it, and I sent it to him and he added the most beautiful textures to the track.

It's one of my favorite tracks I've ever worked on, and it's very special because I'm kind of a control freak when it comes to my music. I normally don't have other people play on my tracks. It's a trait that's kind of left over from college, where I felt like I had to prove myself as a female composer and was doing everything to make sure that everyone knew it was me and not some random dude who's producing for me or something. This was the first time that I let another artist contribute this much to one of my tracks, and I'm just so so happy with how it came out.

I wanted to acknowledge that by giving Bibio a feature, but Spotify has these new rules where they they don't want artists to do that. They want to have it in the metadata instead of in the title. Warp had sent me this long email about how they might lose its preferred partner status, and how I might be penalized in the algorithm if I pushed for this, and I was like, "I don't give a fuck what Spotify wants." They're trying to remove the feature just so that their display is cleaner, when the whole point of feature is to give credit to the artist contributing!

It's funny, with Steven not performing live anymore. I'm always thinking, what is it about Warp that attracts artists who are like, "I'll ever show my face in public again, and who knows if I'll release anything, either?"
Maybe because those artists have already earned enough money that they don't have to play live! When I was on tour, I was having a conversation with someone who was like, "I used to do tour managing for this artist, and now they just score TV shows, so they don't do records or touring anymore." And I'm like, "Yeah, I get it." It makes sense, because it's so much more work to tour and play live. It's incredibly time-consuming—a ton of work, very draining physically and emotionally, and you don't make as much money from it as you do from other projects that are a lot more low-effort. I'd love to be so successful in music that I could just chill—although, to be fair, I love playing live, and touring is an adventure for me.

But it would also be nice if I had something that made me feel like I didn't have to hustle quite as hard as I feel like I am right now. I've been signed to publishing since 2018, and I haven't gotten shit. It's been really disappointing for me, because I think my music is very movie-and-score-friendly. Earlier this year, Warp had been pitching the record around to some commercials, and "Echo in the Field" was being used as the temp music for a Eli Lilly commercial. Warp had reached out and were like, "They're interested in licensing your song, how's $35 grand sound for the sync?" I was like, "Wow, that's awesome, I'll take it." A week later they were like, "Oh, sorry. They decided to go with another."

I've had so many close calls. Last year, "Butterfly Phase" was being used as the temp music for a British Airways commercial, and I had to audition against two other composers who were also trying to imitate my style—and one of them imitated me better than I could even imitate myself, and they got it. Nothing has quite landed. I don't know. I just got to just keep going, and hopefully something will come—and if not, I'll just be a piano teacher.

Tell me about your earliest experiences learning piano.
In terms of my early musical training, the story that my mom tells me is that I saw someone playing piano on TV and I asked for one, so she got me a little keyboard to make sure I liked it—and I really took to it. I started taking lessons when I was about six or seven, and I became obsessed. When I was in elementary school, I started collecting instruments. I started playing string bass in fourth grade, and in fifth grade, I started playing clarinet and oboe. In middle school, I picked up guitar, electric bass, and accordion.

Something really significant that happened to me was when I was 12 and one of my classmates was like, "My mom is a voice teacher, and she's looking for an accompanist to play for her voice lessons." So I got my first job at the ripe old age of 12, getting paid $10 for a half hour in 2001. I'd do six or seven lessons a day and go home and be like, "Damn, I can make money from playing piano—why would I do anything else with my life if I can do this?" So I made a very conscious choice at the age of 12 that, if I could make money doing this, it would be way more fun than anything else I could do, so I was just going to put all my energy into this and dedicate my life to it.

I never put a ton of effort into school, because I always knew I was going to go to music school and that was going to be my path. Once I figured out how useful it is to be a keyboardist, and the fact that we're always in need...like, in college, I accompanied voice lessons, and when I graduated college, my job was playing piano for dance classes, and I also taught piano lessons. I feel really lucky that, as a pianist, there are so many opportunities for us. People will always need a pianist, which was proved to me right into my adulthood with OPN, FKA twigs, and these other artists hitting me up for keyboard work. I really like that I get to collaborate with other people by doing this, because in my own work I tend to be very isolated and not collaborative.

I saw some footage of the Remains: Compound performance you recently participated in on IG. Tell me about that.
I started working with Brandon Stosuy, and he's good friends with Matthew Barney. Back in January, he was like, "I showed some of your stuff to Matthew Barney, and he's really interested in doing something with the prepared piano—and I'm working with this other artist, Brian Jungin, who does these sculptures where he fires arrows into various objects—so we were all talking about trying to do a performance with the prepared piano and archers."

They had this general idea, so we all got together at Matthew's studio and brainstormed this whole project in the various rooms of the studio. In one room, Brandon's youngest son Jake was launching these clay pigeons at the wall and destroying them, and I was helping him with that. In the other room, the archers were firing arrows into the piano, and when they'd take a break, I'd go and play the piano. Every time I'd come back into the room, it was increasingly more difficult for me to squeeze between the arrows—and by the end of it, there were two keys working and there wasn't really much I could do with it.

What's cool is that the entire performance got documented. They filmed everything, and I believe they're pitching it to different museums to have it documented there—and to also have that piano somewhere, because that piano is just filled with arrows right now and it's now this incredible sculptural object that looks really fucking cool. It was fun, because art is really just getting together with your friends and coming up with crazy shit, and it was funny to be doing this with Matthew Barney and be like, "Are we full of shit? No, we're not full of shit." We're all just vibing and making up a narrative where we're coming up with these actions and what they mean.

Talk to me about working with Juri Onuki on the choreography for the "Echo in the Field" video.
Oh my God, I love Juri so much. One of her managers was talking to someone at Warp and she was like, "I want to meet Kelly." So we got connected and we met in Brooklyn, and I'd been getting really into figure skating. I'd been working very closely with my friend Liz Schmidt, who is a figure skater, so every Friday last summer, me and Juri would go to Chelsea Piers together and take Liz's skating class. Juri was a complete beginner at skating, so sometimes I'd just be skating around the perimeter with her, holding her hands.

Initially, when I was thinking about projects for this album, I was like, "It'd be great if I could do something with Juri, and maybe Juri could choreograph something for Liz." Because I'm not a dancer. I got kicked out of ballet class when I was little, because I just could not follow instructions or pay attention to anything, and I'm really not coordinated at all. And part of the reason why I used Liz as an avatar on the last record was because sometimes I have trouble putting myself as the face of my work. It's something that I struggle with as an artist, and I think I went through this deep period of insecurity during COVID. Because I love figure skating so much, I was like, "This person's more interesting to look at, she moves a lot more interesting than I do. I want the focus to be on her and not on me."

I was ready to do that again for this release, but Warp was like, "We really think you should put yourself out there a little bit more. You should be in your music video. You should be in your album art." I really appreciated them telling me that, because for this video, initially I'd wanted Liz to be skating in a different environment with more effects on it. But it happened by fate that Liz was too busy to do anything, and Juri was like, "Kelly, I think you should be dancing in the video." She really encouraged me and made me feel like, "Yes, I can do this." So we rented a studio and she made a series of movements for me to do, and then she came on set and was helping make everything look good—because, like I said, I'm really not that coordinated at all. Juri is the perfect person to work with, as an uncoordinated girl. What she choreographed for me looks really good, and you can't even tell how uncoordinated I am most of the time, because the editing is so good.

Let's talk about the Tate McRae record. From our Twitter interactions, I know you're a fan.
Yes! I was literally going to ask you to ask me about this, because the other day I was in bed and I was looking up Tate McRae on Twitter, because I wanted to see what people were saying about her—and then I saw your tweets, and I was like, "Yes!"

I fucking love that record. I love both of her records, actually. I think she's so critically underrated. I got into her earlier this year when I saw the "It's OK, I'm OK" video, and I just had my jaw on the ground, because I was like, "Oh my God, this is the most confident person I've ever laid eyes on in my life." Like, I wish I had a fraction of this girl's confidence. And she's so young! I cannot believe how how confident and fearless she is, and she's everything that we want a pop star to be.

She writes her own songs, she's an amazing dancer—and, I will say, as someone who used to accompany vocalists, she's a good singer. She has great vocal control. My theory is that people write her off as a vocalist because her voice is a little bit nasal, and I think people conflate her having a nasal tone with her not having good vocal quality—but that's just not the case. I remember earlier this year when I was really getting into her music, I was like, "What do critics think about her? I read her Pitchfork reviews, and I was just outraged. I was like, "This is a fucking travesty." This girl deserves so much better. She really deserves critical recognition because, her songs are really great. Her melodies are catchy, and she's what we need right now for morale.

When I had my album announcement and like my music video release, I'd been like so stressed up leading to the announcement because we were editing the video and it was this big culmination of energy release for me. So after I put out the video and announced the record, I got tickets and went to see Tate McRae at Madison Square Garden by myself. That was how I celebrated my announcement, and I was just so impressed with her as a performer.

Did you see Smile 2?
No, I didn't.

It's great. Probably the best studio horror film of the decade, honestly, and also a very good movie about the music industry and pop music. When I first saw it, there was a song where I was like, "I wonder if Tate McRae had a cowrite on this." And she did! If you have a distinctive songwriting style like that in pop, clearly you've got something.
It actually blows my mind how good of a songwriter she is. She's only 22! It's insane to me. When I listen to her music, I'm like, "You have all these experiences already, young lady!" I clutch my pearls. I watch her videos all the time, and the way she dances is part of why I was inspired to dance in my music video. The way she inhabits her body and moves with absolutely no fear—I want to have like a shred of that confidence and energy and not be apologetic about taking up space or existing. We were even playing Tate McRae at the shoot to get me in the mood to be confident and channel my inner Tatiana.