LOOP, Bristol, October 2021.
photo: Simon Holliday

Loop announce first album in 32 years, share "Halo"

Robert Hampson reactivated his ’80s/’90s psych rock group Loop in 2013, they’d been dormant for 22 years, to play All Tomorrow’s Parties and he’s kept it going ever since. Loop put out the excellent Array EP in 2015 which was supposed to be the first of three EPs, but then Hampson went quiet. Till now. Loop have just announced Sonancy, their first album since 1990’s A Gilded Eternity. The album will be out March 11 via Cooking Vinyl.

“My motto has always been ‘Forward’ and I always try to do something new with each record,” says Hampson. “I always try to push different influences in there. Specifically for this record, I wanted to counter the idea of the ‘Array’ EP, on which all the tracks were longer and drawn out. They still had the motorik element of bands like Neu! and Can, but Loop’s always had that. With ‘Sonancy’ I also wanted to take a post-punk sound, spin it on its head and mix it with a psych influence. A total gumbo. Which has always been Loop, this mash-up of spicy rhythms.”

The first released track from Sonancy is “Halo.” Few artists can do as much with one chord as Hampson, and in typical fashion he turns a pebble into a massive sonic snowball barrelling down a mountain, though in this case the pebble was a boulder. “Halo” is big, heavy and bright, and sounds better the louder you play it. In other words, it’s Loop.

Watch the very trippy “Halo” video, and check out the album art and tracklist, below.

attachment-loop sonancy

Sonancy:
1. ‘Interference’
2. ‘Eolian’
3. ‘Supra’
4. ‘Penumbra I’
5. ‘Isochrone’
6. ‘Halo’
7. ‘Fermion’
8. ‘Penumbra II’
9. ‘Axion’
10. ‘Aurora’

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