- Experimental club tracks that weave narrative into adventurous rhythms.
- Club Chai cofounder Lara Sarkissian has developed an approach that's starting to feel divorced from the dance floor. You could hear this bubbling up in Disruption, the first record she made under her given name (after a few as Foozool), where samples of Armenian instrumentation mingled with meditative drum patterns. "Peninsula," the lead track on her new EP for All Centre, is even stronger. The drums jostle and throb with a warlike force, but what first sounds ominous—duduk woodwinds and metallic groans—unspools into a soft, tentative outro featuring piano from Mesrop. It turns the mood inside-out.
The seven-minute "Btwn Earth + Sky (Parts 1 & 2)" takes that mood as a jumping off point for a soundtrack that could soundtrack a dance floor or a tense film scene. The drums are minimal and trancelike, as a wordless vocal coalesces into a full sample of the Armenian singer Anahit Manukyan, whose voice floats like it's being carried on the wind. Again, Sarkissian slowly takes things apart and lets the synths sprawl out into gorgeous melodies. Moments like this make you realize Sarkissian's tracks are like narratives, telling abstract but evocative stories as they unfurl.
Tracklist01. Peninsula feat. Mesrop
02. Btwn Earth + Sky (Parts 1 & 2)