Back in the distant ’80s, Loop’s heavy sound was a breath of fresh air. A hazy comfort blanket surfing a scissored sustain that a few years later and three albums in simply imploded, its nucleus split straight down the middle and slung-shot out into various new distractions.
As if success had become a catalyst for change, Robert Hampson ditched his guitar for the seriously cerebral electronics of Main with Scott Dowson as John Wills and Neil Mackay side-stepped into the convention-defying dynamics of The Hair And Skin Trading Company, not to mention Wills finally jumping that ship to find alt-folk solace with Pinkie MacLure as Pumajaw.
You kinda thought that was it, all hope of resurrection firmly snuffed-out; then out of the blue in 2013 they were suddenly back on the live scene, re-configured, but back. An appetite for their wares still out there, new flesh hungrily lapping up those back catalogue re-masterings that followed, then new material emerged in the shape of a single EP back in 2015. Rumours of more circulated, but apart from the occasional live appearance, things frustratingly flatlined once again, all the while behind the scenes an album’s worth was happily background-brewing.
Now the eagerly anticipated goods are here, and I’ve got to say Sonancy is a real corker, one that seems to pick up from where the mission left off. That familiar hypno-churn digging in there on “Interference” after the Main-like sizzle of its introduction, Robert’s vocals surfing its stubbled rasp in vaporising trails. Yeah, things may seem a little brighter this time round, less scuzzed-up maybe, but that Loop essence is well and truly intact, rhythmically solitaired by those Bristolian boys Hugo Morgan and Wayne Maskel from The Heads.
Things drift into another Main-like interlude of “Penumbra I”, a sketched drone that feels like a re-run of A Gilded Eternity‘s “Shot With A Diamond” without the Apocalypse Now samples, a sound which is expanded later on by its sequel which adds a more symphonic slant to the flesh and spirals an undulating twilight, expertly metered by this peppery pout. The reflective foil that the serpenting melancholics of “Isochrone” (one of the best tracks here) curls into, its gathering impetus tugging at your shirtsleeves in multi-layered bliss, as that skip-chuck braille of drummage circle eights expectation.
A gritty psychedelia that cuts into the powder keg that is “Halo”, its redemptive ransom coursing / chorusing with tangled optimism, though it is more than matched by the triumphant tear that buoyantly bayonets “Fermion”‘s spiking radiance. “Axion” is adrenalised on the self-same, washed in this vapouring gasp of effects-fodder that eerily rotates your hemispheres.
Well worth the thirty-two year wait? Hell yeah, though the genie was let out of the bag yonks ago, this still feels in a good place for thirty more.
-Michael Rodham-Heaps-
