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**Laika - Sounds Of The Satellites**
★★★★☆

In the mid-'90s, while Britpop was busy looking backward and grunge was collapsing under its own flannel weight, a small revolution was brewing in the shadows of London's underground. Enter Laika, the brainchild of ex-Moonshake bassist Margaret Fiedler and her collaborator Guy Fixsen, who together crafted one of the decade's most prescient statements about our increasingly digitized future with their 1997 opus, *Sounds Of The Satellites*.

The album emerged from the ashes of Fiedler's previous band Moonshake, whose experimental post-rock had already pushed boundaries but left her hungry for something more radical. After that group's dissolution in 1995, Fiedler retreated to the studio with Fixsen, a producer whose work with bands like My Bloody Valentine had established his credentials in the art of sonic manipulation. Together, they began constructing what would become a masterclass in electronic-organic fusion, naming their project after the Soviet space dog – a fitting metaphor for their own journey into uncharted musical territory.

*Sounds Of The Satellites* sits comfortably in that nebulous space between trip-hop, post-rock, and experimental electronica, but it transcends easy categorization. This is downtempo music with teeth, ambient soundscapes with pulse and purpose. Fiedler's bass work remains central, but it's now processed through a maze of samplers, drum machines, and analog synthesizers that transform familiar rock instrumentation into something altogether more alien and futuristic.

The album opens with "Breather," a slow-burn meditation that immediately establishes Laika's modus operandi: hypnotic rhythms, layers of treated vocals that drift in and out like radio transmissions from deep space, and a production aesthetic that makes everything sound simultaneously intimate and vast. It's the sound of late-night urban solitude, perfect for those 3 AM moments when the city feels like a spaceship hurtling through the cosmos.

"Almost Sleeping" represents the album's emotional core, a gorgeous piece of ambient soul that showcases Fiedler's gift for melody beneath all the electronic manipulation. Her vocals float over a bed of analog warmth and digital precision, creating something that feels both human and posthuman. It's followed by "Spooky Rhodes," which lives up to its name with haunted keyboard textures that wouldn't sound out of place in a David Lynch film.

The standout track, however, is "Red River," a seven-minute journey that perfectly encapsulates everything Laika does best. Beginning with a simple drum loop and bass line, it gradually accumulates layers of texture – backwards vocals, treated guitars, field recordings – until it becomes a dense tapestry of sound that somehow never feels cluttered. It's hypnotic without being soporific, complex without being pretentious.

"Dirty Bird" offers the album's most direct nod to trip-hop, with its head-nodding groove and urban atmosphere, while "Thomas" ventures into more abstract territory, building tension through repetition and subtle variation. The closing "Widows' Weed" brings things full circle with its combination of organic instrumentation and electronic processing, ending the album on a note of melancholy beauty.

What makes *Sounds Of The Satellites* so compelling is its prescience. Released in 1997, it anticipated the laptop music revolution by several years, predicting a future where the boundaries between electronic and organic music would become increasingly meaningless. Fiedler and Fixsen understood that the most interesting music would come not from choosing sides in some imaginary war between man and machine, but from finding ways to make them dance together.

The album's influence can be heard in everyone from Radiohead's later electronic experiments to the current wave of ambient techno producers. Bands like Broadcast, Stereolab's more experimental moments, and even some of Portishead's later work owe a debt to what Laika accomplished here.

Laika continued to evolve through subsequent albums *Good Looking Blues* and *Wherever I Am, I Am What Is Missing*, but *Sounds Of The Satellites* remains their defining statement. It's an album that reveals new details with each listen, a patient masterwork that rewards attention while never demanding it. In an era of instant gratification and algorithmic playlists, it stands as a reminder of music's power to create genuine atmosphere and emotional depth through careful construction and inspired restraint.

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