Laika

The alternative galaxy of the late Nineties is a set of systems in overflowing expansion. Some multiply their satellites exponentially while actually concealing at their core the seed of an extraordinarily slow implosion (trip-hop), others shine at the very limit of their potential until they nearly blind us (post-rock), while new bodies begin to take shape on the carcasses of orbits officially extinct but still owing a few karmic cycles.

Amid all this, the still-burning memory of an interstellar meteorite named – of all things – Moonshake: a jagged mass of indecipherable origin, yet somehow familiar on the surface, familiar enough to validate the most disparate generative hypotheses of any institutionalized system, but also alien enough to leave its origin lingering in some imprecise, still-unexplored dark space.

The Moonshake experience (formally wound up in 1997) had barely managed to vanish from the interception radius when another curious, indefinable object appeared on the very same trajectory.

Born in part, in some way, from the "romantic" rapprochement between two of its founders, Margaret Fiedler and John Frenett's Laika had set out from the post-punk matrix of their band of origin as early as their superb debut "Silver Apples Of The Moon" (1995), a pulsating comet of a record that shot past quickly and went ignored, betting decisively on electronics and Fiedler's vocals. Yet a restless undertow, a taste for the unusual and a pronounced anti-commercial streak clearly betrayed its close kinship with the by-then moribund Moonshake experience.

Two years later Fiedler and Frenett (with a lineup now permanently expanded to include the ever more essential Guy Fixsen, as well as Lou Ciccotelli and Louise Elliot, both already present on the previous record) resurfaced intent on retouching their debut formula, with a clearer idea of the Laika aesthetic in mind and an unprecedented concession to the much-feared compromise.

A shrewd manager of her own career and free from the well-known tensions with Callahan, Fiedler refines the Laika brand so as to fit, at least on the surface, the fashion of the moment – chill-out – and, with a simple pirouette, turn into an elegant feline trip-hop outfit as was the custom in the Nineties.

The reference to the Bristol sound goes well beyond, however, being a mere ploy to win over the specialist press without disturbing its sleep too much: Fiedler and Frennett had always championed trip-hop as the only genuinely worthwhile (non-)trend to come out of Albion that decade, reclaiming their long-standing passion for jazz, dub and analogue sound. More than once, moreover, when quizzed by journalists about Laika's original sound, Fiedler would laconically dismiss the band's recipe as "trip-hop… but much faster", in opposition to the loathed britpop current and to the stereotyped drift into which downtempo was beginning to lock itself.

Having shaken and turned the snowglobe – a handy, highly allegorical souvenir we're glad to carry into orbit – it is with a track whose crust is exquisitely trip-hop that "Sounds Of The Satellites" opens: moving with a velvet-gloved tread somewhere between Portishead and Badalamenti, and animated by a red-hot Moog, "Prairie Dog" unspools in paranoid, sinuous fashion through wordplay and sudden nihilistic jolts ("If I could pull the nerves from my skin/ I would") – a radical statement of what from this point on will increasingly become the band's defining expressive obsession: the blues. Fiedler has completed her metamorphosis into the role of a sweet, discreet chanteuse, yet one constantly stirred by a shadow of repressed anxiety kept laboriously on a leash (just listen to the delicately anguished ballad "Shut Off/ Curl Up"). The blues of Bessie Smith, as an immediate and provisional touchstone, but also and above all the contemporary, post-industrial blues of Beth Gibbons. A far cry, in any case, from the ethereal, dreamy guise that more than a few had tried to fit her into up to that point, forcing Laika into the techno-ambient cauldron, but also from the more abstract, free structures still favored on "Silver Apples".

The other distinctive trait of the Laika satellite is thus immediately revealed, and it's to be found precisely in the blatant taste for the retro, expressed as a romantic and naive aesthetic, but also tinged with a good dose of self-irony. And it's within this nonchalant play of parallels that the extensive use of synthesizers comes into play. Synths that mark a sharp break from the markedly more rhythmic and dirty sound of its predecessor, synths that decisively contribute to the new dimension, more devoted to melody, of "Sounds Of The Satellites", as well as to resurrecting, more or less deliberately, genetically related spirits – Klaus Schulze, Edgar Froese – only apparently dormant. "Out Of Sight And Snowblind" (the only track with Fixsen on vocals) and "Starry Night" are the moments that most of all invoke the "cosmic", not only as a symbolic layer but also as a strictly musical reference and allusion.

The lunar disorientation of "Out Of Sight And Snowblind", moreover, opens a narrow gap for examining the architecture favored by this incarnation of Laika: a composition that proceeds through layers of continuous background, which instead of building up in accumulation sways like a circular flow, choosing to travel on highly refined polyrhythms rather than the usual 4/4, (another choice that clearly projects Laika ahead of the trends of the era), to finally estrange the result with further "ambient" synth phrases, alternating with equally alien organic incursions.

Analyzed under the microscope, each track thus reveals itself as an impressive reservoir of ideas and stylistic solutions, such a load of rhythms and melodies that the average, mediocre musician would have gladly settled for to put together an entire album, and which for these orbits instead end up densely interwoven within the space of a single track.

The gentle, hypnotic movement of "Almost Sleeping", complete with an exotica hallucination in its tail (as well as Fiedler at her most sensual), the incredible psychedelic-Kubrickian odyssey of "Bedbugs", the nervous jungle-wave (?) drift of "Poor Gal" are the most admirable feats of so much industriousness put at the service of lean, enjoyable, and ultimately "pop" compositions.

A complexity born of roots never truly severed with everything that begins with kraut, with the Can of "Ege Bamyasi" (the intro to "Starry Night" is worth a tribute in itself), but also with King Tubby, Juan Garcia Esquivel, Eric B. & Rakim, all the way to the liquid-form stars of Sun Ra.

A diachronically varied baggage, an unwitting precursor to so much retromania yet to come, a background always proudly displayed, starting with the choice to prefer for themselves the title of "band", rather than the trendier, more creative labels of the electronic galaxy of the time.

Even in this crossover attitude, then, the second work by Laika can easily be assessed as trip-hop of the highest order, with a special emphasis on that –hop and its implications forgotten by the second generations of the Bristol school. And yet, what makes "Sounds Of The Satellites" a special work is something else, and once again it's the precious "Prairie Dog" that shows it, unleashing a wonderful crescendo in its second half, with a redeeming flute that suddenly develops the composition vertically, instead of the genre's classic straight-line progression.

It's here that the true journey (the trip-) of "Sounds Of The Satellites" is revealed, a subtler, multi-directional journey, which ascends symbolically towards unknown and intoxicating stellar associations, while another kind of energy is projected inward, toward the investigation and overcoming of a state of emotional precariousness in order to access a point of equilibrium, in that state where movement and stasis no longer make any sense and it's possible to discover immensity in the fraction of a moment.

That cosmic stream of consciousness named "Breather" couldn't be told in any other words: synthetic melancholy on the verge of nervous collapse, it runs tightly right over the sample of a breath in apparent dynamism, while Fiedler makes the painful reckoning of denied dreams and unopened doors, gravitating finally toward the eternal questions about time and eternity. And time does indeed seem to dissolve in those beautiful confluences of pulsating synths, which stretch out into a long four-minute tail – according to the timer – but of potentially infinite suggestion.

It's in this light, in this path of progressive detachment, that the elongated orbit of "Sounds Of The Satellites" finds an overall sense and unity, while still eschewing any definitive resolution. The quiet metaphysical digression of "Spooky Rhodes" and the absolute calm of "Dirty Feet", which even switches off the ever-present polyrhythms, indeed seem only temporary. Just when balance appears to be equably restored, the glittering sleet once again settled at the bottom of our amulet, out of nowhere comes a disturbing radio bulletin on the fate of Laika, the very dog who was the tragicomic victim of an entire era of the featherless biped's boundless cosmic ambition, and an inevitable tribute running through the whole of Fiedler and co.'s experience.

"Sounds Of The Satellites" thus presents itself as the most complete and finished snapshot of Laika's journey, a forward-looking position, with its gaze dislocated in the past while at the same time lucidly fixed on the future, that deserves, without much surprise, the lukewarm and uncertain reception given to it by the media upon its first appearance. "Sounds Of The Satellites" in fact shines as a system unto itself, as an unprecedented sonic formula (fully reassessed only in relatively recent times) and as the possibility of a necessary introspective process, configuring itself as a provisional surrogate, while you wait to book your next extremely pricey trip into lunar orbit, or your nearest Vipassana retreat.

Laika thus signed one of the most representative works of an exciting era of transition.

There are things I can’t explain

Why a seashell loves the sand

Why tornadoes love the plains

Why my dreams have lost their wings…

Ride the wave of great music

Add OndaRock to your favorite sources on Google Discover. Don't miss our reviews, milestones and latest news straight in your feed.

Follow on Google

06/07/2014