Not content with having issued his LÜP album back in 2021, soundscape artist and musical machinery constructor Lomond Campbell has chosen to release a cassette of those loops that were utilised on the album.
Spread over ninety minutes, these brief snippets give the impression one might have of watching a collage artist at work in the studio, cutting up the separate ingredients without really knowing how they will fit together.
All the pieces collected here were constructed specifically for the manufacture of tape loops, some of which made their way onto last year’s album; but the way this has been compiled is as if an esoteric mix-tape has been put together especially for you. None of the pieces have titles; it is just a continuous run of ideas that is constantly evolving.The combination of drowsy woodwind and electronic throbs open up the can with modular synth progressions gradually revolving, dropping in and out of phase. It is hard to follow where it might travel, so it is best to sit back and allow it to make its eccentric journey. Jittery synth notes fidget in the foreground as a snowdrift slowly piles up behind. There are no beats here, but different feelings emerge as each side progresses from enigmatic Angelo Badalamenti-infused piano vignettes to electro synth workouts; it is a journey through the mind of a singular composer for whom brevity is a matter of necessity so that as many ideas as possible can be explored.
Voices soar to the rafters of vaulted ceilings and merge with off-key synth tones that stretch into ugly shapes, assaulted by cavernous subterranean mysteries. The terrain is always changing, as is the weather and the time of day. The slow moving intensity of a kaleidoscope refracts all these ideas and forces them back towards you with shivering starscapes merging into stop-motion images of buds unfurling. This twirling of the experimental radio dial makes for a strange listening experience as nothing ever really develops but you are too busy watching for the joins for this to be an issue. From blunt to sharp, the listener is drawn further into this web of ideas; piano pieces are soothing and a little melancholy, while the sound of a dulcimer pushes us eastwards. Tapes squeal over repetitive motifs, the sounds degraded and stretched while drifting elegiac synthscapes bear groans and cracks that appear to emanate form outside the stereo, as if things were growing in the spaces behind the speakers.Although this is essentially made up of snippets, it is Lomond’s mind that somehow coheres it into a satisfying ninety-minute listen that never outstays its welcome, be it through jagged abstractions, the shake and roll of an aeroplane in flight right through to delicate, funky pastoral sketches. Lost Loops is a rather fascinating release that would sit well with the original album, but also works as something to put on if you just can’t decide what to listen to.
The ideas are legion and they all seem to work perhaps because they are so short and so diverse, but this is thoroughly recommended for anybody with musical curiosity.-Mr Olivetti-
