Wednesday 26 January 2022, 8pm
Ecstatic @ Cafe Oto
26/01/2021
Celestial live
Laila Sakini live
Not Waving Dj
Spivak live
Teresa Winter live
Bathed in moonlight, ’I Had Too Much To Dream Last Night’ is the gorgeous debut by childhood friends Celestial, arriving in the glistening wake of 2021 gems on Ecstatic by Romance, Not Waving, Spivak, claire rousay & more eaze. Convecting a richly sanguine sound gleaned from a SequentialCircuits Sixtrak synth and Fender guitar with the results mottled to frail AGFA tape, it’s the modest and warm soul on display that speaks to a quieter side of the rainy city psyche, picking up a fine thread of etheric inspiration that leads back to The Durutti Column via Ry Cooder’s ‘Paris, Texas’ soundtrack and Iasos’ intoxicating new age, with a fragile, gauzy vision of instrumental songcraft ripe for getting lost in dappled fantasy.
Multi-instrumentalist, vocalist, producer and performer Laila Sakini is London based, Melbourne born.
Her major works include Like A Gun (EP), Vivienne (LP), Strada (EP), Into The Traffic, Under The Moonlight (LP), Princess Diana of Wales (LP), Cupo (LP w/ Valentina Magalett) and Figures (LP w/ Dr Lucy Van) among several single, EPs and her tape series Mystery Messages.
Working with piano, voice, guitar and silence Laila creates dynamic and textured environments that provide the listener with space to develop their own meanings and responses.
Laila has performed at: Cafe Oto, Galeria Zé dos Bois, Berlin Atonal, De Nor, Listen! festival, Gaudeamus Festival, Meakusma x Arkaoda, The London Handel Festival, Wunkderkammer Festival, Ponto d’Orvalho, Intonal Festival and among others.
She has been featured several times in The Wire Magazine, graced the cover of Switzerland’s cult Zweikommasiben music magazine, been featured on BBC1, in Frances’ Les Inrockuptibles, LA’s AQNB, Belgium’s Gonzo magazine, Italy’s Blow Up and in several specials on NTS Radio, LYL, Dublab, Red Light.
“It’s like a dream where everything’s bright and gilded and beautiful but you keep remembering something is very, very wrong” - Low Company, 2020
"Laila Sakini is producing some of the most vital and brittle music of our time.” – Boomkat, 2020
“An enigma with a purpose” – The Wire Magazine, 2021
“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.“ - Resident Advisor, 2022.
https://lailasakini.bandcamp.com/
Not Waving is the moniker of London based Italian musician Alessio Natalizia, known for his bold and immersive soundscapes that blend electronic, experimental, and ambient elements.
He is a NTS Radio resident DJ and the owner of Ecstatic Recordings, the London based record label formed in 2013.
With a deep-rooted love for exploratory sonic journeys, Not Waving's music can be described as a sonic kaleidoscope, filled with intricate layers, unexpected twists, and a constant search for new avenues of sonic expression.
https://notwavingmusic.bandcamp.com
Maria Spivak (b. 1989, Limassol) is a musician and sound artist based in Cyprus. Her work is a play on the nuances and poetics of pop, exploring themes that allude to her myth-inspiring heritage in a folk-tainted voyage of esoteric explorations. Her debut LP, ΜΕΤΆ ΤΟ ΡΈΙΒ, released on Ecstatic Recordings in 2020, is a chiaroscuro blend of hypnagogic pop, smudged synths, and ambient electronics, infused with the spirit of the local DIY scene. Her tape release, Rare Backwards, was presented as an addendum to the LP in the same year.
Spivak has worked towards this seemingly effortless style and conception of atmosphere for a decade, flowering from MA studies in Architecture in the UK, to develop her roots in Cyprus, where she draws on the energies of a small but active local scene, as well as the island’s agitated recent history, against a backdrop of myth-inspiring topography, that all help imbue her style of sound sculpture with a distinctive, quietly conflicted soul.
Her lyrics rotate effortlessly from Greek to English, her live performances comprising intimate sonic liturgies with bursts of energetic and often deconstructed 90’s-inspired techno.
Yorkshire-based composer and musicologist, Teresa Winter, is a mainstay on prism-pushing experimental labels Night School, Death of Rave, Kashual Plastik, and Boomkat’s in-house Editions imprint. With a doctorate on the vitally important English composer and electronic music pioneer Delia Derbyshire, her work exists in conversation with the sonic and technological legacies of modernism, post-structuralist theory, and esoteric ritual practices.
