let's talk about...laika

Lamb and Insides were two musically ambitious post-rock (S. Reynold's definition) female led duos that also skirted the trip-hop category. Seek out Lamb's s/t debut and Fear of Fours, and Inside's Euphoria (the latter is one of my favorite albums of the decade).

Overdosing on the first two albums a lot recently. Surprised they haven't been more canonised: the first one in particular is so comprehensively out there in pursuing its claustrophobic On The Corner meets Ege Bamyesi fixation (weird to think that they ever get pigeonholed as trip hop, even positively). Though I pull out Sound of Satellites more often probably due to its dreaminess ("trip hop" makes more sense here I guess).

I actually ripped my Laika cd collection a few weeks ago and completely overdosed on them. Sound of the Satellites is my favorite too.

I've liked Silver Apples of the Moon ever since I bought it ~15 years ago, but for some reason it never occurred me to investigate Laika any further. Listening to Sound of Satellites now, and it sounds fantastic.

Sound of Satellites is my favourite, so deep and dreamy. I love albums that kind of work as background music while also being really intense and charged and involving.

Yes, that's a good description!

first two albums are still fantastic (and the latter two are also good)

lol vintage suzy

Band was so cool. Margaret was briefly in PJ Harvey and Wire. Where's she at now? And what happened to Guy Fixsen? He was such a cool producer. Loved that Dog Faced Hermans album he recorded.

Ran across the 2-CD set cheap and holy shit they really were ahead of their time.

Indeed.

We used to email, but it's been years. Married civilian life, law degree, job at the BBC, I'm sure if she does music again we'll hear about it.

Yes!! Such a fantastic band, the high-point of trip-hop, if that's what they really were.

Plus I loved watching Margaret play with Wire on one of their tours, it was like a contrasting personality to the lads.

I never thought of them as trip-hop, I thought of them as sort of this future-world bizarro-world version of Can.

I loved these guys. Once in the 90s at the local HMV, I chatted up this beautiful girl in the trip-hop section about how if she liked Portishead, she'd love this, being so much less gloomy. (Showing how little I understood Portishead.)

I also emailed Guy Fixsen once as a fanboy, having loved his production on King Cobb Steelie and Laika atmospherics. He was nice enough to write back.

Fucking classic.

Last year I finally figured out how awesome Moonshake was with Margaret (as well as some of their stuff without her).

Eva Luna rules. But Laika is one of the coolest band ever.

I just don't understand why Sounds of the Satellites isn't more recognised as being one of the finest electronica LP's of the time, but then I feel that way about the first two Lamb albums.

I do not like Lamb much but Laika are so good and underrated. I think they didn't quite make it because they were too experimental in a way that trip hop and downtempo fans in the mid 90's couldn't quite digest it.

There could be something to that. Also, like Lamb, a lot of undanceable odd time signatures.

do ppl dance to portishead?

7/4 is very danceable IHYK.

xpost Yes. Very. Slow. Ly.

They bob.

I love Portishead, particularly the self-titled record which everyone seems to underrate in comparison to Dummy and Third, but Lamb and Laika speak to me far more. Something like 'Cotton Wool' is undoubtedly danceable!

Interesting to try to conceptualise early Lamb as vaguely post Can and Miles Davis in the way that Laika so obviously were. It's like, it's hard to say whether the link was there but by he same token the big singles off Lamb's debut (Gorecki aside) feel so aesthetically connected to the first Laika album. That sense of rhythmic restlessness, it's too hot and humid for the beats to sit still.

There's some afrobeat in that first Laika album, too.

Five more years pass, still ahead of their time.

I wish Margaret was still making music.