"War Island" ist der Soundtrack zu einer Reihe an Artworks der multidisziplinären Künstlerin Gaiko und erscheint zur Eröffnung ihrer gleichnamigen Ausstellung in London gemeinsam mit einem Artbook Ende April 2022.

At the time of increasing British isolation and political failure, GAIKA, theperennial internationalist, has turned the focus of his analytical lyrical approachdirectly to the place of his birth.
Gone are the dancehall inflections and infectious rhythms of his Caribbeanheritage. Instead the focus is on London in 2022, a sprawling megacity city hepoetically deconstructs with dense southside storytelling. The lyrics are setagainst futuristic urban production.
The results are cinematic salvos from the global underground that demandinvestigation.
According to GAIKA London is cruddy as hell and everyone is a little drunk.
Lyrically War Island is GAIKA’S attempt to analyze Britain's current geopoliticalposition in familiar terms. In It he considers the nation's capital by means of aconceptual construction he calls “The Good Ship Prosperity”.
It is a fictional public house that for him symbolizes the nexus of a multitude ofthematic or emotive strands - class struggle, crime and punishment, migrationand the politics of the built environment.
From this position War Island OST is the story of a braggadocious gravel-throated drinker lost in former glories and failed romances. The lastman in thispub telling anyone who will listen tales from another time, oblivious to his owndemise.
War Island OST, like the country it chooses to satirize in its title , is a conceptrecord bereft of moral compass in its leadership. GAIKA deliberately makes nodirect philosophical musings in this record . Instead its message is deliveredmatter of factly, often floating somewhere between spoken word, song, poetryand road rap delivery.
Touching moments are offset with bleak punchlines that leave little prisoners.
By turns downtempo and decidedly industrial and by others anthemic soaringwith fragile gothic beauty, The atmospheric soundtrack is a succinctdemonstration of artists' sometimes contradictory aesthetic andtestament tothe collaborative nature of the work. Listened to in isolation War Island OST isan urban mixtape from the future, familiar yet somehow alien, hard yet intricateand emotive.
Each song is structural and deliberate in nature, emotive pieces with a host ofcollaborators between London, Manchester, Mexico city and Shanghai arepoignant personal assessments of matters of power wealth and class in BritishSociety and how these matter relate to the rest of the world.