Welsh electro musician Kelly Lee Owens has detailed the influence of Daft Punk on her career following yesterday’s announcement the Parisian electro duo have split. Daft Punk did not provide a reason for their decision, but after 28 years together the news of their folding disappointed fans and fellow artists the world over. Among many of Daft Punk’s famous fans, Lee Owens has opened up on what the duo meant to her.
“I first got a car when I was 17, and I remember driving from north Wales to Manchester quite a lot – someone made me CDs for the drive and there was a shit load of Daft Punk on there,” Lee Owens told NME. “I was a bit of an indie kid at the time and I listened to that first album, ‘Homework’ and remember being like, ‘Huh – there’s something in this’. It was like a door opening for me that allowed me to step into another place, where everything is new and sounds weird and interesting. I just felt this raw energy that these people, or robots, were creating; and the mystery shrouded around them was super intriguing.”
fuck.
thank you.
i love you. pic.twitter.com/7clbag4nP4— Kelly Lee Owens (@kellyleeowens) February 22, 2021
Born in Flintshire, Wales, Lee Owens dropped her career as an auxiliary nurse in a cancer ward to pursue musical ambitions in 2009. In 2017, she released her eponymous debut album via indie label Smalltown Supersound, with the follow up ‘Inner Sound’ arriving last year. “They (Daft Punk) were signed to major labels and doing a licensing deal, and that really informed me in terms of what I should do with my music – I now have licensing deals with my independent label Smalltown Supersound,” she told NME. “They showed that you don’t need to give your masters away and play all these games: you can make great music and people in the industry will want to work with you anyway. That spirit is really needed more than ever. And it’s not about being ‘controlling’, it’s being protective of their creativity and not allowing that to be exploited.
“The real beauty of Daft Punk’s music is that it’s not pretentious at all. They would want to make something and just do it…there’s some magic that comes from pushing and fusing different worlds together just because it excites them and because that’s what they feel like they need to do. There’s that classic thing of creating and then destroying yourself as an artist to keep yourself creatively open; Daft Punk have done that over and over again.”
