You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs and piece by piece, tell the story of how they were made. I'm Rishikesh Herway.

Kelly Lee Owens is an electronic music producer and songwriter originally from Wales.

She's released two critically acclaimed albums and done remixes for Björk and St Vincent.

Her most recent album is called Inner Song.

It came out in August 2020 following what Kelly described as the three hardest years of her life.

In this episode, she takes apart her song on and she explains how the song's tone and tempo shifts mirrored her own journey processing her trauma.

My name is Kelly Lee Owens.

The last two or three years before making this album, I'd been through quite a lot personally.

And I would say, you know, suffered a lot of losses, which involved a lot of grief.

The day I made this song was a day that Keith Flint from the prodigy passed away.

And the prodigy I've loved my whole life, and I think actually it technically counts as having been my life.

It was my first CD single.

Yeah, I've loved them for most of my life.

So when I heard that he'd passed, it really affected me.

And the song in a sense was born of that energy initially.

But even though this song was inspired by the passing of Keith Flint, which is a very emotional thing,

I often start songs with inspirations from samples that I take.

So anyone that knows me knows that I'm obsessed with capturing sounds.

One of the samples that I had laying around on my iPhone was of a train that I recorded, like a year earlier.

It was at a London station and I was on my way to an airport.

It sounded so high definition, there was a specific rhythm.

And so, you know, I just whipped up my iPhone and recorded that quickly.

...