- British soundsystem culture meets wistful balladry on Laila Sakini's latest record.
- Laila Sakini's Vivienne defined the early part of the pandemic for me. As the Toronto lockdown (and Ontario winter) vied to see which could last longer, I spent March and April of last year walking through the city with the album, which made the abandoned city only more skeletal and strange as Sakini's voice and piano were warped through her mastery of effect pedals. It captured the ennui of Covid-19 while also carrying whispers that maybe things would get better soon. I know this sounds overly whimsical, but I also know that I am not alone in this feeling. Everyone I've spoken to who has stumbled on her work feels nearly territorial about it, as if sharing it would dispel some of the magic.
Vivienne's companion record, Into The Traffic, Under The Moonlight, was just as beautiful, but expanded her palette with hints of dance music. There were breakbeats and strings, as her voice assumed a rhythmic quality. If Vivienne represented her early morning daydreams, Into The Traffic, Under The Moonlight, was her late night ruminations in the taxi home from the party. Her new record, commissioned by the effortlessly cool A Colourful Storm, is just as nocturnal, though the references are different. As Sakini explained to The Wire, the album grows out of "my interest in the monarchy, [Anglo] history, imperialism, aristocracy, systems of power, colonialism and all that." The songs on Princess Diana Of Wales channel this Anglophilia by bringing British bass music and soundsystem culture into contact with her gossamer-like lullabies.
Negative space is a constant on the record. Opener, "Sleet," for example uses a ticking clock to provide the rhythm under Sakini's filtered vocals—it almost sounds like Julia Holter making a digi-dub track. The fragility of Sakini's voice on "Evaporate," and the passing horn lines, feel alien because of the echoing emptiness that surrounds them. This subtle approach to dubwise wizardry reaches an apex on the album's heart wrenching centerpiece, "Still Beach." A broken guitar melody washed in feedback starts the song as Sakini opines, "Watching the future wash away / Giving it up to have this day." But in the song's second half, the grumbling pulses of sub-bass turn what had initially sounded like a forlorn refrain, "Went downstairs," into something that feels optimistic.
Elsewhere the soundsystem references are a bit more crystalline. "Exhaust" is Sakini taking the night bus tour of Burial's London. She folds sirens, a heavy bassline, and dubstep rhythms into refracted snippets of her voice. We move from London to Bristol on "Fragments of Blue." The song is a rusted trip-hop track with a squeaky sort-of breakbeat and walking bassline that propels the song toward her lyrical climax: "Can this always be how it feels? / Can this always be?"
Princess Diana Of Wales is a short record, with only three songs over the three-minute mark. But each of those tracks is a dense node with esoteric lyrics set against carefully layered instrumentation. With each listen, there's another line, another noise, that jumps out from Sakini's sonic coral reef, a reef that feels simultaneously uplifting and deeply distressing. As many parts of the world return to another round of lockdowns, this feels like just the sort of record that many of us will need to start 2022 with.
Tracklist01. Sleet
02. Still Beach
03. Swing
04. Closer
05. Exhaust
06. Fragments Of Blue
07. Evaporate
08. Choir Chant