Kelpe launches DRUT Records

London beat hugger Kelpe has launched his own DRUT Records label, and will inaugurate it with a forthcoming EP and album. 

The producer – real name Kel McKeown – first came to prominence with his heavily textured slant on instrumental beats through DC Recordings, surfacing with the 2003 EP The People Are Trying To Sleep, subsequently releasing three albums and numerous EPs via the iconic label run by J Saul Kane. More recently seen excelling on Black Acre and the perennially impressive Serbian label Svetlana Industries, Kelpe has elected to break free with the foundation of his own DRUT Records label, with the focus squarely on his own productions.

DRUT launches with the three track Answered 12″ next month which should lay down the foundations of expectation for his subsequent fourth artist album, cannily titled Fourth: The Golden Eagle, which arrives in June. The lead track from the aforementioned single is streaming below and feels like the  fidgety and unstable cousin to FaltyDL’s recent ubiquitous number “Straight & Arrow”.

A press release accompanying the announcement has McKeown explaining his reasoning for launching DRUT: “I’d been thinking about starting a record label for a few years but my original motivation was to release other people’s music – something to focus time and effort on other than making and pimping my own music….After a while it dawned on me that since I had my new own album that I was finishing and looking to release, the best way to launch the label would be to release that and hope it blossoms from there.”

DRUT Records will release Answered by Kelpe on 12″ on April 15.