Friday 8 August 2025, 7.30pm
The Birthday Party
A real time 3-act play with an original score performed live by Laila Sakini with interstitial, pre-recorded narration by Graham Lambkin. Cast consists of party guests: Flora Yin-Wong, Jackson Burton and Dominic Goodman. Featuring on stage audio/ visual props birthday decor and exclusive merch created by Graham Lamkin and Laila Sakini.
Multi-instrumentalist, vocalist, producer and performer Laila Sakini is London based, Melbourne born.
Her major works include Like A Gun (EP), Vivienne (LP), Strada (EP), Into The Traffic, Under The Moonlight (LP), Princess Diana of Wales (LP), Cupo (LP w/ Valentina Magalett) and Figures (LP w/ Dr Lucy Van) among several single, EPs and her tape series Mystery Messages.
Working with piano, voice, guitar and silence Laila creates dynamic and textured environments that provide the listener with space to develop their own meanings and responses.
Laila has performed at: Cafe Oto, Galeria Zé dos Bois, Berlin Atonal, De Nor, Listen! festival, Gaudeamus Festival, Meakusma x Arkaoda, The London Handel Festival, Wunkderkammer Festival, Ponto d’Orvalho, Intonal Festival and among others.
She has been featured several times in The Wire Magazine, graced the cover of Switzerland’s cult Zweikommasiben music magazine, been featured on BBC1, in Frances’ Les Inrockuptibles, LA’s AQNB, Belgium’s Gonzo magazine, Italy’s Blow Up and in several specials on NTS Radio, LYL, Dublab, Red Light.
“It’s like a dream where everything’s bright and gilded and beautiful but you keep remembering something is very, very wrong” - Low Company, 2020
"Laila Sakini is producing some of the most vital and brittle music of our time.” – Boomkat, 2020
“An enigma with a purpose” – The Wire Magazine, 2021
“With each listen, there's another line, another noise, that jumps out from Sakini's sonic coral reef, a reef that feels simultaneously uplifting and deeply distressing.“ - Resident Advisor, 2022.
https://lailasakini.bandcamp.com/
Graham Lambkin (b. 1973) is a London based multidisciplinary artist and publisher whose work embraces audio, visual and text-based concerns. Lambkin was a founding member of the seminal English underground group The Shadow Ring who between 1992-2002 explored the possibilities of fusing amateur folk music, cracked electronics and surreal wordplay into a unique and unsettling hybrid that continues to exert an influence today. Following the dissolution of The Shadow Ring Lambkin embarked on a run of critically acclaimed solo recordings including Salmon Run (2007), Amateur Doubles (2011) and Community (2016) as well as a series of collaborative projects with the likes of Joe McPhee, Keith Rowe, Moniek Darge, Michael Pisaro and Áine O'Dwyer. Lambkin was also the founder of the Kye label who between 2001-2016 published over 60 new audio works by artists as diverse of Philip Corner, Gabi Losoncy, Vanessa Rossetto and Malcolm Goldstein as well as significant archival collections by Anton Heyboer, Moniek Darge, Joe McPhee and Henning Christiansen.
As a performer Lambkin has appeared internationally, presenting work at venues such as The Whitney Museum of American Art, NY, The Kitchen, NY, New Museum Brooklyn, NY, CALarts, CA, Sibelius Museum, Turku, I.C.A. London, Cafe OTO, London, Arts Centre, Melbourne and Fylkingen, Stockholm.
Lambkin's visual art explores the metamorphic properties of the drawing medium in which the abstract and the figurative perpetually shape-shift across contrasting visual planes, thereby undermining the expected categories of image content. These works have been exhibited internationally in five solo shows to date, most recently Time Runs Through the Darkest Hour at Blank Forms, NY. Lambkin has seen eight volumes of visual/text based work published to date, chiefly through Penultimate Press, Berlin/London, and has also produced graphic work for a range of artists including The Dead C, Harry Pussy, Splintered and Double Leopards.
Lambkin's much anticipated new release Aphorisms (2023) has just been published via Blank Forms, following their archival 4xLP boxset Solos (2021), and looks ahead to the extensive 12CD box/book anthologising the complete works of The Shadow Ring later this year. In addition Lambkin is readying for the release of Gondolas 2CD (2023), a collaboration with James Rushford via Erstwhile.