Laila Sakini - Strada (2020)

Laila Sakini dials in a deliciously mysterious round of smudged trip hop and spiritual jazz urges for our latest Documenting Sound edition. It's a properly yearning, nostalgic trip; sort of Blue Lines meets Laurie Anderson & Peter Gabriel’s future fantasies, and we're obsessed with it.

Like previous series contributor Jonnine, Sakini hails from the foothills of the Dandenong Ranges outside Melbourne, where she wrote ‘Strada’ - an absorbing session of blunted loops and smeared samples naturally inspired by a DIY set-up and an understandable, unfulfilled urge to play - and be - outside.

Drawing on what’s to hand - Bass Clarinet, Saxophone, her brothers borrowed guitar and a bank of samples - Sakini channels her curfewed frustrations and a heavy sense of the blooz into a ruggedly hypnotic and lucid suite of tracks that ultimately helped her assuage a lockdown-induced malaise, offering up the resultant sensory properties for you, too.

Like many of us pushed to reflect on life during this cursed year, nostalgia seems to be a symptom we’re all prone to and which oozes out of ‘Strada’, providing a tangible sense of lust and memories shared (by coincidence or design) with fellow Australians Jonnine/HTRK and CS + Kreme. From the nightfall of chamber trip hop in ‘La Macchina (The Car Drive)’ to the weightless Blade Runner rave scene hallucination of ‘Fiorucci’, and the ponderous bassline of ‘Stephens Secret’, Laila totally taps into that vein of strung out Antipodean soul that we love so much, and could hardly be better summed up in the starry-eyed gaze of ‘Towards The Opaline Sky’.

If you’ve been privy to Laila’s ace ‘Figures’ tape with Lucy Van, or the eye watering ‘Vivienne’ LP earlier this year, expect similarly seductive work, edged with a poppier, closer-to-home feel and ultimately, heavier hit.