let's talk about...laika

I got into 70s Miles Davis years after listening to Laika, and now I know where a fair amount of inspiration came from (compare "Bedbugs" with, say, "Rated X" or "Moja"). I think the band might've had a small hope that "Bad Times" would become an underground novelty hit.

Oooh, does anyone have the First EP by Moonshake? I've been trying to track that down for years...CD-R trade, anyone? Pretty please?

MF is brilliant; i actually went backwards. liked Laika first (despite having heard Eva Luna quite some time before having heard Sounds of the Satellites); my favourite record store (which has since closed) had one of the first-edition copies that came with the really lovely hand-designed sleeve. and of course, it took ages for that first album to come out in the US. unfortunately at the time, i was in high school and scraping together lunch money to go buy music, so i didn't get the import, despite having them play it almost every time i was in the store.

i have also managed to always miss getting to see them play live when they've been in town, and they've been through (i think) 3 different times. dammit.

"Badtimes," i actually like quite a lot. MF's delivery is brilliant, and the cool breeziness of the track is lovely.

while i do wish they'd get more recognition, outside of people here and other musicians and such, i doubt they ever will.

hearing some live Portishead changed my mind a bit about them, though---i don't think Beth Gibbons' voice does so well in the studio, is my problem. it could just be me, however.

I picked up SAOTM on a whim, a long time ago, and have always enjoyed it. I still hold the first 6 songs of SOTS as the most gorgeously paced set of songs ever. Laika are horribly underrated.

Oh, and I love Laika (and Moonshake) too.

is that the one with the song about gravity on it? i have a copy of that and loved it but didn't go any further despite the countless times mike put tracks on mixtapes for me. maybe i oughta search out the compilation...

(am now expecting mike to post and tell me that actually it was only 11 tracks that he recorded for me, the tapes they were on and the dates he posted them... 8)

andy

Andy, that's called projection.

Anyway, all that info died with the old PC...

Very intrigued to hear of this extra uncredited track from on the CD version of First. I believe the 12" version of 'Only Sleeping' sports some fancy remix of the lead track (rather that the vanilla edit on the CD), which I'd like to hear. I'd also like to hear whatever it was Paul Schutze did (or didn't do) to 'Spooky Rhodes' - left off the 'Almost Sleeping' EP cos it was hard to hear where he'd spent Too Pure's money (or something).

Can't justify the double-CD comp when I think I have 2/3rds of the extras disc.

despite being cruelly and utterly broke. *grins*

I was more excited by the shuddering, hyperactive "Beestinger" - the sole 2002 track on the Lost In Space comp - than this material.

I dunno, it might grow in the imagination if I leave it alone for a bit.

Of their back catalogue, I only have Sounds Of The Satellites and the greatest hits thing... I assume most of everything else is just as worth tracking down?

I don't detect the figurative step back from the mic that Keith does - vox very much like Good Looking Blues I think (which may not have been in the class of the first two LPs but did offer something new; Wherever I Am... really doesn't).

Only dug into Laika this year after marvelling over their cover of Wire's "German Shephards". Love the breathy vocals and interesting beats. The 2cd best of is fantastic, though I also compiled the rest of their single tracks as an addendum.

Did anyone else work in a similar vein?

http://www.last.fm/music/Laika/+similar

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.