LOOP Heaven’s End
Aquarius Records
When people think of spaced out, drone-y drug rock, Spacemen 3 seem to get all the love, which is of course fair, Spacemen 3 totally rule, their music is magical, especially for some of us who will probably only ever experience drug use by strapping on a pair of headphones and blasting Taking Drugs To Make Music To Take Drugs To. But c’mon, let’s share the love, with another group, who existed during the same time, in basically the same place, and who were sonically quite similar, yet crafted their own distinctive and incredibly iconic body of work, one that has been criminally unavailable for years now. These two reissues are the first in what will hopefully be a comprehensive reissue campaign for London space rockers Loop.
For years, Loop have been a favorite of in-the-know music nerds, whose Spacemen 3 collection is most likely rivaled by their Loop collection, and basically, to love one, is indeed to love the other. You like thick looped guitars, blown out distorted buzz, krautrocky rhythms, song structures that are simple, cyclical, repetitive, hypnotic, guitars dripping with effects, vocals drawled lazily and buried in the mix, everything hazy and washed out and bleary eyed and druggy. Wait, were we talking about Loop or Spacemen 3? Exactly. The main difference to our ears, was that Loop always seemed to rock way harder. The Spacemen would often flutter off in tripped out ambient flights of fancy, dropping the drums completely, letting the guitar pulse and throb, the vocals drifting ethereally over the top. And sure, Loop were capable of that too, but seemed to hew closer to a more driving sound, the drums much more integral to their overall vibe. The sound of Loop was equal parts Krautrock and space rock, and their name was definitely referenced their sound. Loop mainman Hampson would even go on to form Main, a more guitar loop based outfit, whose obsession with texture and loops absolutely informed all of the Loop recordings. The guitars were thick, wreathed in distortion, delay, reverb, doused in effects, that not only altered their timbre, and their tone, but also often made the guitars sound backwards, creating woozy of kilter jams that seemed to slowly and subtly shift and change shapes before our very ears. The vocals weary and washed out, the drums skeletal and simple, but all fused into totally tripped out, drugged out, kraut infused space rock bliss.
Heaven’s End was Loop’s debut, released in 1987, just a year after Spacemen 3’s first record (and apparently Spacemen 3 were always quite annoyed by constantly being compared to Loop), and inadvertent or not, it’s the Loop record that is the most Spacemen sounding. Lo-fi, raw and gritty. The opener "Soundhead" is surprisingly rocking, with lots of wah guitar, propulsive drumming, ethereal vocals, the song that would define the sound of Loop, but it’s the second track where the record really gets going, slipping into a slow motion Stooges groove, a lurching looped riff, the vocals buried in the mix, the drums a simple pound, a main refrain that’s catchy as fuck, the whole thing constantly repeated over and over and over and over, totally blissed out and trancelike. The following track slips even further out, the guitars super sharp and buzz drenched, the tempo a lugubrious crawl, the drums total barebones, swirling spaced out effects, the guitar billowing out into soft focus buzzscapes over which the rest of the instrumentation seems to hover weightless. The title track is a simple garage-y pound, with the cymbals and the guitars looped backwards (hinting at some Teenage Filmstars to come maybe?), the guitar stuttering creating incidental rhythms, very druggy and mesmeric. And so it goes, each song, a simple motif, locked in and set on repeat, the core remaining near static, looped into infinity, while all around that groove various guitars and effects and voices swirl and whirl and spin and stretch and shimmer divinely. Easily one of our all time favorite records for sure. This deluxe reissue not only comes in a super spiffy full color mini lp style gatefold sleeve, with printed inner sleeves, it also comes with a whole bonus disc, featuring alternate mixes of two of the album tracks, as well as a killer cover of Suicide’s "Rocket USA", with a cool programmed drum beat, tripped out psychedelic guitars, and hushed almost crooned vocals, and the three tracks from the Peel Sessions, included a seriously stretched out version of "Straight To Your Heart". SO AWESOME!!!
SO TOTALLY AND UTTERLY RECOMMENDED. ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL! And for recent converts to the world of druggy space rock, anyone who has been digging local droney drug rockers Wooden Shjips (and we know there are LOTS of you out there), will definitely fall in love with Loop!!