The rapturous reception for Lailien’s 2019 debut album, Ensoular, saw the Canadian electro-psychedelic cosmonaut featured around the world, including BBC 6Music’s Freakzone and Sirius XM, and his forthcoming sophomore album, Ta-Da! looks to blast him even further into solar system. Ta-Da! Is pure Lailien, a combination of ultra-trippy melodies, religious invention and a nuclear powered-kaleidoscopic world view, it shows off the endless colours of Brad Shubat’s magical musical mind.
Containing eleven tracks of blisteringly inventive electro-indie fireworks, Ta-Da! Reinforces Lailien’s reputation as one of music’s most ‘out-there’ artists, bringing together not only an array of musical influences to his songs but a broad canvas of philosophical, religious and pop culture references. The track Michael Jordan Peterson presents a portmanteau character of the universally-loved basketball player Michael Jordan and the polarising Canadian clinical psychologist Jordan Peterson, challenging the world view of the male ego in light of an enlightened age of polygendered individuals and trans rights.
Ta-Da as a word is pure incantation: a spell for magic, the moment of “voila!” and revelation. It is when the threshold between profane and sacred is crossed and the mystical, magical transcendental act occurs.
In a similar vein to Milton’s Paradise Lost, Ta-Da! follows and proposes a radical new origin story for Lucifer and our fallen world. In Ta-Da! the Devil is gradually revealed through a hall of mirrors-type escapade to be running society’s show in his and her twisted machinations. The album is in many ways the antithesis to Kanye West’s ‘Jesus Is King’, presenting a much more nuanced story of creation, devoid of pre-given doctrine that fails to adequately address the actuality of our particular contemporary historical moment. ~ Lailien