The late 80s and early 90s British psychedelic noise rock legends Loop came out with a new album earlier this year after several decades. The new album is titled ''Array 1'' and follows a path back to the well-known and renowned early years Loop. It is odd how both The Telescopes and Loop came out with new albums this year and both of which follow their way back to the early 90s. Either way it has been a good year for psychedelic noise rock, with many of the legends making their long overdue comebacks.
Loop essentially start off where they left off back when they split up, with tracks like Precession and Aphelion essentially following the age-old recipe of repetitive noisy distortion laden psychedelic rock in the vein of Heaven's End and Black Sun. The keywords here are repetitive catchy psych basslines, together with echo and distortion filled equally catchy noisy guitar riffs and mellow dreamy neo-psych style vocals with a shoegaze feel. The third track of the album titled Coma leaves this distinct pattern and wanders in a more dreamy ambient coma, while the fourth track Radial wanders back to the righteous path of repetitive psychedelic noise rock. Both the monumental 17 minutes long Radial and Aphelion have a clear feel of noisy ascendance, with the former having a more darker feel to it. Both also pack some fine repetitive drumming to push the ascendance forward. Aphelion also sounds in places very smilar in structure to Aidan Baker's alternative project Caudal.
Altogether the new Loop album is pretty good and was worth the wait. Nonetheless it does not quite have the feel of the earlier groundbreaking Loop albums, but even despite of this it is one of the best releases of 2015. Along with the new The Telescopes album.
Some useful links:
Discogs: http://www.discogs.com/artist/149931-Loop-3
Last.fm: http://www.last.fm/music/Loop
