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Laila Sakini's full length debut outing of her Princess Diana of Wales project allows some space for her to explore slightly more extroverted, melodic instincts and vocal-led approaches. There's been hints of this sound for Sakini on the tracks she's posted on Bandcamp, though it's satisfying to hear a full body of work that mostly puts aside her usual (and excellent) compositional work and playfully takes on dreamy-dub otherness, with an almost fourth-world feel at times. Interesting this should arrive at the same time as Troth's latest, as they certainly share a similar sonic space, both positioning the voice front and centre, coated in delay and reverb, texture and feeling seemingly more important than the message. Though Sakini is now based in London, like with Troth, it feels connected to a wider contemporary Australian sensibility - the cavernous, abstracted innerzones explored by Jonnine, Carla, Kallista++. Why and how this is happening right now will take more insight than a brain like mine can muster, but there's certainly evidence of an emerging 'tradition', or at least a collective set of inspirations and understandings. Whatever the reasons, the result is another fine example of world-building music making and with this latest iteration, Sakini is doing a fine job at cultivating her own mythology in her own microcosmic way.
