Baba Ali entered the world defined by their contradictions. Comprising Baba Ali himself, a New Jersey native and hip-hop aficionado who relocated to London in 2016, and British producer and multi-instrumentalist Nik Balchin, their bond was formed when working together in an Islington pub. They would play each other songs from the other’s musical wheelhouse, and instantly they realised the potential for an uncanny, alchemical combination if they could mould their two musical worlds together.
Their 2020 debut album ‘Memory Device’ suggested that they might have been onto something special, but follow-up ‘Laugh Like a Bomb’ sees them stand tall for the first time at their full, bold, swaggering height. What were once opposing instincts are now joined in a hybrid that has unleashed the full power of the duo.
Lead single ‘Burn Me Out’ is a beast. There is a glorious seduction to it, an incendiary, subversive glamour oozing from every icy clatter and red-raw guitar scuzz. It is the embodiment of a bleeding edge style that splices no wave disco and angular post-punk, filing them alongside other emerging luminaries such as PVA, Lynks and The Umlauts, but with a simultaneous disregard for them all. Maria Uzor, vocalist with dance-punk duo Sink Ya Teeth, mirrors Ali’s immaculate cool, the two voices jointly surveying the world that cowers beneath them.
On ‘I’m Bored’, Ali is able to channel an insouciance that is borderline sadistic, matched by Balchin’s spider-fingered keys that in another context could form the basis of an exquisite synthpop banger. Instead, they are used to conjure the energy of an underground basement throbbing with late-night revelry, its walls dripping with sweat and grime.
‘Memory Device’ had been produced by Hot Chip and LCD Soundsystem alumnus Al Doyle, but the band take on the duties themselves here. On the title track, a rumbling bed of Balchin’s elegant, synthesised percussion and Ali’s deep vocals set such an aura of stylistic cool that when a keyboard line loosely reminiscent of Bronski Beat’s ‘Smalltown Boy’ creeps in near the climax, it is immediately subsumed into the Baba Ali ecosystem.
“Do I make you feel less alone now / Do I make you feel more like I care,” Ali sings on ‘Make U Feel’, and somehow as a listener, all answers seem to apply equally well. ‘Laugh Like a Bomb’, even down to its very title, is the result of Baba Ali’s glorious tangle of contradictions. The duo guide us through their underworld, while remaining untouchable within it. They make us feel like we care very much about their music, and yet this all appears to come so easily to them that it can seem like they don’t – surely their greatest trick of all.
