Modern Love HHV Records 8 Items

When Laila Sakini's debut album ‘Vivienne’ arrived in 2020, it felt like the record we were waiting for to map out our tangled reactions to an uninvited reality. Never self-consciously strange, it revealed itself slowly and cautiously, like a shadow in the corner of the eye, or an alchemical symbol in a bowl of alphabet spaghetti. This time around Sakini has worked her unique world-building to an even finer point, forming six tracks around a theme that's so close to our heart it's almost beating in time. Initially inspired by Krzysztof Kieślowski's 1991 arthouse classic "The Double Life of Veronique", the cult Polish director's enduring modern fairytale that serves as a cosmic rumination on identity and choice. Detailing two identical women - both singers, both in love - the film lets one live as the other dies, forcing us to consider the implications of art and endurance in the face of life's myriad challenges.

Sakini takes Polish composer Zbigniew Preisner's influential score for the film and uses it as a jumping-off point for ‘Paloma’, bending the more grandiose moments into baroque awkwardness on opening track 'Fluer D'Oranger' and evoking the mood of scene-setting cues 'Weronika' and 'Véronique' on the recorder-led 'The Light That Flickers In The Mirror'. And while Preisner's score zeroed in on the musical virtuosity of the film's lead characters, Sakini reinterprets that as a metaphor for self-discovery. Playing piano, violin, glockenspiel, timbale, recorder, and occasionally singing, Sakini captures a mood of innocence that immediately transports the listener back to simpler times. Her music isn't self-consciously simplistic, but forcing herself to interface with instruments impulsively rather than studiously, her sounds are all heart, no filigree.

In spirit, it reminds us of cult Canadian album "The Langley Schools Music Project", a collection of 1970s recordings of school kids singing rudimentary renditions of pop songs in a school gymnasium. That album's genius was in the bottling of hope and innocence: the feeling of joy from hearing and wholesomely interacting with music that's known and loved without a sense of hierarchy or desire for cultural clout. Sakini subtly subverts this by evoking the amateur spirit in the most bewitching way; instead of sourcing her ideas from Bowie, Fleetwood Mac and the Beach Boys, her stock is the established art canon, and by reforming those sounds she makes an insightful comment on intellectualism and access. European classical music is all too often trapped behind the frosted glass of respectability and assumed skill - craft replaces spirit, and technique replaces soul. By approaching these gestures from a different angle, Sakini softens the edges sonically and intellectually, finding music that bubbles with emotion, and most strikingly - hope.

Her choice of instruments and the way she interacts with them allows us to feel as if we're not only listening but contributing. It's a bottom-up way of absorbing art that's traditionally been top-down, and a reminder that we're all part of the experience, whether we're humming along to the remnants of a theme as it dribbles out of an ear in the shower, or dreaming of spotlights in a parallel life that may or may not be real. Sakini's music is nostalgic in a sense, but nowhere near the buttered popcorn and high-fructose candy migraine of the Netflix/Spotify algorithm generation of regurgitated churn. She makes sounds that remind us of what time and experience may have stolen from us, and how we might recover it. We're gagged.

Mary Jane Leach is a composer focussed on the physicality of sound, its acoustic properties and how they
interact with space. She has played an instrumental role in NYC’s pioneering Downtown scene alongside
Arthur Russell, Ellen Fullman, Peter Zummo, Philip Corner and Arnold Dreyblatt, as well as devoting years to the
preservation and reappraisal of Julius Eastman’s work since his death in 1990, compiling the ‘Unjust Malaise’
3CD set in 2005 and editing the 2015 book ‘Gay Guerrilla: Julius Eastman and His Music’.
Woodwind Multiples
features four pieces for multiples of the same instrument: four bass flutes, nine oboes,
nine clarinets, and seven bassoons. Each piece works closely with the unique sound of each instrument,
combining pitches that create other, sometimes unexpected, tones, primarily combination and interference
tones, as well as rhythmic patterns. What you hear is what happens naturally - there is no processing or
manipulation.
8B4
(1985/2022), played by Manuel Zurria, is for four bass flutes. It is a revision of
8x4
, which was written
in 1985 for the DownTown Ensemble and was only performed once, due to its unusual instrumentation: alto
flute, English horn (originally bass oboe), clarinet, and voice.
Xantippe’s Rebuke
(1993) was written for Libby Van Cleve, for eight taped oboes and one live, solo oboe.
The eight taped parts are equal and dependent, while the solo part is meant to be a solo with the tape as
accompaniment. The piece works with the unique sound of the oboe, starting with unison pitches that
create the richest sound, building the piece from there. Pitches and rhythmic patterns that occur naturally
are notated and then played later, which in turn create other pitches and rhythmic patterns. So, in effect, the
nature of the oboe and its natural sound determine the direction of the piece.
Charybdis
(2020), played by Sam Dunscombe, is for solo clarinet and eight taped clarinets. It combines a
somewhat obscured reference to
Weep You No More
, a John Dowland piece, which combines with the sound
phenomena created from the melody and supporting chords of the Dowland.
Feu de Joie
(1992) was written for bassoonist Shannon Peet and is an homage to the bassoon and its
wonderful sound. It is for seven parts—six taped and one “live.” The taped bassoons combine to create a bed
of sound that exploits the unique qualities of the bassoon, creating combination and interference tones,
starting off with unison pitches, creating a rich sound that builds from there. Most of the subsequent pitches
and phrases occur naturally, and are then notated later on in the piece, which in turn creates other notes and
phrases.

Limited Edition.
Single Sided Vinyl

Small light scuff on side A.

DJ stickers.