Formed in 1998 by the dynamic duo of poet, lyricist, activist, singer and Bengali-rooted tough-guy Rosina Kazi and her life partner, producer, sound designer, philosopher, aphorismist and Barbados-born king of chill, Nicholas Murray, LAL always proved hard to describe. They’re a band, but not only a band – they’re a music making magical mushroom, the visible flowering part of a much larger organism, connected with very fine but infinitely resilient roots.
We can talk about LAL’s music using words that eventually abandon us: electronica, trip-hop (remember that?), electronic soul, jazz, pop, protest music, justice jams, downtempo beats, lounge, funk, world, multcult, etc etc. Or we can talk about HOW they make music, How they live their lives, how they run their music-making firm and how the line we draw around LAL, delineating these two accomplished and passionate musicians is just not accurate. LAL is the flowering fruit of a complex network of microscopic filaments, these roots also belonging to other firms and organizations: incisive and relentless activist like No One is Illegal, ethical community based businesses like The Toronto Woman’s Bookstore or my performance company Mammalian Diving Reflex. We are one, huge, justice-hungry organism, a world-wide team of individuals, groups, organizations, companies, firms, NGOs, businesses, researchers, activists, philosophers and artists.
LAL takes the long view, they’re in it for the long haul, obsessed with making music but more obsessed with using the making of music as a way to materialize ways of being together, fostering a sharing of resources, ideas and, at bottom, maintaining a tenacious hope that persists despite the frightening world we live in. Nestled amongst the big corporations are a multiplicity of small producers – imagine clusters of beautiful mushrooms growing on piles of shit, their thread-like roots so very fine, but sometimes stretching unseen for miles, one in Oregon clocking in at 2,400 acres, thought to be the biggest organism in the world. Again, LAL is a mushroom, a magical one.
