6LA8 Music Review!

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Album: In Wake of a Dying Nation [Disc 1]


What do you say about music that melts the emotions and ideas of a nation so that when they reform into tunes and beats they are both beautified and distorted beyong bare recognition? You call it 6LA8, and you nod in recognition of it. Music cannot be quanitified in words but 6LA8 are smelters, and what they fashion at the end is something more than just notes.  Its liquid frustrations, frozen to hypocrisy, glazed by optimism and studded by resignation, all of which typifies our collective mental state these days.


I love this album because its no part of it the same.  You think you finally know what these guys are on about and are just about settling down with a cup of tea to listen to a series of similar sounding tracks when the next one jolts you to surprise.  Its like looking down at your cup and finding it filled with coffee instead of tea.


There's the anesthetised loveliness of Masking Delight, the metallic grinding of Distorting Truths.  The funny drunken plunkiness of Our Feeling is Sound, the grim resounding of our frustrated conditions in A 5 minute rerun.  The 'dancing in golden sands' optimistic feel of the first of the sugar trilogy songs and the layer upon layer of epicness built up in the Loadshedding track.


These are songs you listen to with your eyes closed and your mind empty.  These are songs that will bring up unbidden memories of kulfis eaten years ago, of childhood galiyan and long-dead relatives.  These are songs that will stir your blood, make you wonder why the noblest of ideas and the greatest plans failed so spectacularly when it came to our poor, stricken country.  There are songs that will make you laugh at the funny wondering simplicity of them, songs that will make you hold your head for the agitation and confusion they leave in their wake.


The tracks don't do the feelings for you - they don't dictate or even hint at the emotions.  Much like the philosophies of its members - you are encouraged to make what you will of them.  And whether you mull over them or put them in the background of whatever work you're doing or sit entranced for hours (I have done all 3 :D) - anything will do just as well.


So long as you're listening.




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Shumaila Hashmi.