Photay reimagines Laraaji for real
When we released our first Splice Originals pack, we thought it should exemplify our intentions for the Originals oeuvre. It needed to be an unforgettable sound pack from an artistic luminary with a distinct perspective. Electric Zither with Laraaji felt like the right choice. Laraaji is a musician’s musician, his fanbase and influence grown over years through homemade cassettes and esoteric newsletters and blink-and-you-missed-it shows. We wanted to expose more people to Laraaji’s genius and see what they’d do with his twirling melodies and tumbling textures. Would they chop his electric zither and his kaleidoscopic kalimba to smithereens? Would they smear them with reverb? How would they make Laraaji’s pack theirs? Photay’s answer was to treat Laraaji’s sounds to a sort of atomic remix, turning the loops and one-shots against themselves, upside down and inside out, bathing them in effects, and adding his own digital-dream dynamics. Both Photay and Laraaji weave timbral tapestries, but approach them from different sides, and Photay’s lens adds a soupy synthetic saunter to Laraaji’s playing. It’s a spectral and spiritual resampling, a must for musicians with their minds set skyward.
