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arts editor keith bruce's article on laki mera album download

Yesterday, I'm prepared to speculate, tickets for Radiohead's return to Glasgow Green on June 27 next year will have sold out in less time than it takes to cross Argyle Street on a busy Saturday afternoon. The band's return to the city's iconic Clydeside parkland, where they played a fondly remembered gig at the end of September 2000, when Kid A was still young, comes at a time when the band are once again in the news for being at the cutting edge. By the end of June, their band's latest album, In Rainbows, will have been available in conventional compact disc and retro vinyl format for six months (it's out on Hogmanay), but most fans will already have the music by way of the pay-what-you-think-it's-worth download which was made available in October.

When Glasgow band Laki Mera completed their debut album Clutter at their studio in the former Templeton's carpet factory which overlooks Glasgow Green, multi-instrumentalist Andrea Gobbi suggested to his somewhat incredulous bandmates that they simply give the music away. 'Nobody does that,' was the reaction. Today, however, that's what they are doing and every Herald reader can help themselves to a copy of Clutter simply by visiting http://www. rolinc.co.uk/lakimera.html .

I'd encourage you all to do so and then hurry along to their gig at Glasgow¹s excellent new Stereo venue in Renfield Lane on Thursday (or Po Na Na in Edinburgh's Frederick Street a week today). Laki Mera are a very sophisticated band, built around the songwriting talent and exquisite vocals of Laura Donnelly, and featuring a quartet of highly accomplished
musicians: Gobbi, pianist Keir Long, cellist Trevor Helliwell and percussionist Tim Harbinson. Their skill in mixing live playing with electronic wizardry not only marks them out as ideal signings to Paul Haig¹s ROL inc label, but also as significant followers of Radiohead's lead.

Donnelly is a big fan of Thom Yorke and his colleagues but points out that her band's motives in giving away their music are rather different.

'Radiohead had nothing to lose and wanted everyone to be able to get the album at the same time,' she says. 'Our priority is to get people to hear the music. If people hear it, maybe half of them will like it and we'll be able to get bigger and better gigs. We'd all love to leave our day jobs and get the second album recorded ­ we already have new songs in our set.'Donnelly is a Glasgow School of Art graduate and is employed for her design skills making blinds for a company in Clydebank. Her music-making, however, goes back to her school days and songwriter, record producer and Pearlfisher Davey Scott remembers her impressing him as a 14-year-old at East Kilbride Arts Centre. She was subsequently a member of God's Boyfriend while still in her teens, releasing singles on the trendy Fierce Panda and Rough Trade labels.

That nascent career fizzled out, but for the past four or five years Laki Mera has been taking shape after she met Gobbi when she was working in a bar. He is from Rome and, like Long, a trained sound engineer. Together Gobbi and Long run a recording business, Carrier Waves, which is the basis of the band's self-sufficient recording set-up.

Harbinson is from Belfast and a former sideman of Juliet Turner and Duke Special. Donnelly wrote the band's ROL single How Dare You, but she says the band are trying to write more collectively as well as simplifying their approach, both live and in the studio. The result is music of great elegance ­ log on and check it out.

http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/entertainment/music/music-reviews/2007/11/16/soundcheck-86908-20115359/

Laki Mera

How Dare You

RELEASED on ROLinc, the label owned by former Josef K frontman Paul Haig, Laki Mera make music like soundscapes for sci-fi films.

Based around instrumentalist Andrea Gobbi, the Glasgow group includes singer Laura Donnelly.

With her stunning vocals over beats that refuse to be pinned down, How Dare You is an angry tune pierced in the heart by an icicle.

The B-side is instrumental I'm Talking. Sounding like an electric waterfall it is full of choppy beats and crystal-clear descending synths. Mostly it reminds me of Ryuichi Sakamoto at his ambient best filled with sounds that should be heard walking through woods.

How Dare you is released on Monday. The band play Po Na Na, Edinburgh on December 15.

Laki Mera / Keser

Bannerman's Edinburgh

Fri 27 April

 

A busy night in the capital with Tryptch taking over at least four of the main medium sized venues making it hard for anyone else to pull a non corporate generated crowd. Fringe of Tryptch would be not too far off in describing this bill from two sides of the new music/experimental continuum. One band instrumental that rumbled and roared the other elemental with siren like vocals and a cello that soared...!!!

 

Keser totally instrumental, lap-top at the forestage, guitar and bass grooving around heads down swaying in constant motion with a euphoria its purpose. A cavernous sound that suggested elements of the Cocteau twins on a crash course with Sigur Ros only no singing and with extra bass. Indeed if Edinburgh had an underground system a few folks might have been heading for cover if a twin beam of lights was to come heading out of the darkness, such was the rumble of the subsonic bass being generated from the far end of the archway. Keser's album is winning them many friends on the electronica circuit, on this showing and in spite of the sound system more of us are beginning to understand why they are being lauded.

 

Sound systems have been a continual trial for Laki Mera, never ones to do things the easy way they have stripped back their sound by dropping the computers - allowing them to play more small shows. This has been a good move on two levels one they have added a much needed human element with added dynamics and two, more people will now get to hear this astonishing band as they plan to now gig as much as possible.

 

Opening with 'She's a day Later' the powerful and insistent rhythm dragged the crowd in from the adjoining bar. By song 3 a Goldfrapp-esque trashy version of Kate Bush's 'Running Up That Hill' - a risky move that paid off -  Laura Donnelly, of truly beautiful voice, had the unfamiliar crowd right with her. Even as they slowed the pace mid set with the haunting 'signals', not the ideal soundtrack for midnight on a friday night in this former beirkeller, the appreciative audience to their credit stayed with it.

 

In the end they were rewarded by the double whammy of two outstanding tracks that finished off Laki Mera's set. The first was 'No Motion', which has instant classic written all over it, in a perfect world this would be the track that gives this band the break they deserve. Writing the perfect pop song is not what you would expect from Laki Mera, who work in the folk-tronica idiom, in 'No Motion' they may have inadvertently come close.

 

The clincher on the night was 'How Dare You?', where this former lap-top led quintet almost rocked out. Almost because this band thrives on the tension between laying it all out on the line and pulling back just as things get too obvious. Their music is made up of moments of exquisite melodic purity on one hand and dark pulsing rhythms on the other. Clearly this was the first show for them without an electronic safety net as some mistakes were made in timing and pitch, however the signs look good for the future as this band starts to work out some of their inner demons and truly start to express themselves as a musical unit.

 

So Fringe of Tryptch finished on high for one night only with two groups who won't look out of place on the official fest next April - watch this space or this one or this one...!!!

 

Brian Mountbatton

have a listen on

http://www.last.fm/music/Laki+Mera

 Ok. Look. I appreciate that we are hardly the most communicative bunch. Two years in and this is our first ever blog entry. But, friends, I am sure that you will understand that we've been pretty busy getting pretty good. And anyway, not much has really happened - a smattering of low-key gigs, a couple of demos and one or two little evenings on the piss. However, all change. We are about to begin recording our new album, which will be brilliant. And don't take my word for it. The News of the World said

  'Never before in the history of music has there been such a threat posed to World order than that posed by the upcoming release of Laki Mera's debut. Hold on to your hats!' (The News of the World did not say this)

 The album will be complete by December, and up until then there are obviously only a few shows - one in the ABC sometime at the end of November, but we'll keep you posted. It won't be until Christmas when the gigs really start kicking in. The idea then is to hire out venues that are slightly off the radar - warehouses, studios, cat litters, that sort of thing - and really set the atmosphere, since it has come to light that none of us really like going on second after some four piece guitar band in some run down generic rock and roll dive. Plus, its a bit more fun playing somewhere more interesting. Essentially the shift the band has taken in the past few months is that we want to have a bit more fun. No more stressful troopsing around from place to place screaming 'Like me , like me'. We think we're great, and that's fine.

 So, I think that's it. We will keep you up to date with the progress of the album and will try our best to fill this space otherwise with the meanderings of unfit, petty minds.

 Word,

 Laki Mera.