Stop Meowing At Me, Mr Pickles
Loop - Fermion (2022)
Hello internet pals of music. Today we’re gonna crank the first single of the psych rock legends first album in 32 years.
Yeah, I know.
Loop again. What can I say?
Says a lot that a band can stop right at the moment they’re really pushing their sound (but let’s face, they were always pushing their sound), reform and return with an album that three decades of fans and followers and bands that just wish they could be Loop, would never expect to be so good.
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They’re so lean now, although it never felt like there was much fat you could trim before. No one’s guitar tone sounds like Robert Hampson’s, and it’s such an amazing tone that it’s impossible to decipher where it stops being purely guitar-driven. It’s some fucking zen-master shit, high up on the peak of electronics bamboozelry. The rhythm section, made up of members of The Heads, is a perfect accompaniment-stripped down and mechanical to the point of questioning whether the sound is even human made and not programmed by a lysergic AI.
This is a prime example of what Loop does best. Hopefully, an abundance of riches and wealth and new reverence and millions of acolytes will follow this, although that’s doubtful. But I just love seeing / hearing the elder statesmen come down and drop the hammer and show us all why we’re still talking about them thirty-some odd years later.
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