let's talk about...laika

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.