Spectacular by LAL

What does it mean to embody the politics cultivated in a community? On their 8th album SPECTACULAR, electronic duo LAL, comprised of Rosina Kazi and Nicholas Murray, have crafted a bold testimony on the arc and aftermath of relational transitions, both within ourselves and those we care for, while they’re still in motion.

Written with painstaking attention to emotional detail, the album came to life over time and across geographies — the darkness of Cowichan Bay, B.C and dawn light of their studio in the DIY space Unit 2. Written with proximal distance, Murr would send Kazi “tones,” fragments of intuitive melodies, created while experimenting with a Polyend Tracker. Early in the morning, in order to get ahead of the blaring construction in the area, Kazi would sing overtop and send recordings back, over time creating a reciprocal process of raw sentiments captured without restriction, with a collage of bass and strings layered overtop. 

The result is a project that defers generous space to the voice, splintering and ascending, while encasing it with the support of only essential sonic infrastructure — slices of experimental chamber pop, greyscale minimal techno, and shades of trip hop that’s both pillowy and dense; anthemic and exacting, in order to reproduce an emotional tug of war. It’s an approach to healing through vulnerability that has become the trademark of LAL, yet on this album turns the screw one rotation further — accounting for the bold, liminal space between the dissolution of one iteration of a relationship before the arrival into the next, with patience and care. 

For over two decades, Polaris Prize longlisted Toronto's downtempo soul saviours electronic duo LAL, comprised of Rosina Kazi and Nicholas Murray, have built a catalogue of silvery, internationally-influenced electronica that insists that the dancefloor remain a place of resistance.

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