As their third and final studio album, Loop had mostly excised the 1960s Technicolor psychedelia that had defined their debut, Heaven’s End, leaving only a molten orange lava of layered space rock that was entirely all their own. Like the first two albums, here it is presented remastered and with a bonus disc of outtakes and demos from the era. Even nearly 20 years after its initial issue, the mix of tight structures and improvisation, all pegged out at 11, can give any modern “loud” band a run for their money.
Reactor
One thing Loop perfected is leading off an album strong: Heaven’s End had the swirling wah-wah of "Soundhead;" Fade Out had the dark, manic "Black Sun;" and here it is the dense space of "Vapour," marrying a bass and guitar melody perfectly with Robert Hampson’s vocals fading even more into the background then they were before. Just as the track seems to be coming to its conclusion, it comes back with a force and vigor unmatched by most tracks in their discography (or most of their contemporaries) before slowly dropping in tempo to a lugubrious end.
For utter balls out rock, few things can touch this album’s first half. "Afterglow" is a panned nightmare of crunchy guitar stabs and erratic drums, and the following "The Nail Will Burn" runs on an overdriven bass guitar melody with crunchy, brittle guitar shards cast atop. It’s not until "Blood" that the pace begins to slow down. It does so with atmospheric piece of cascading guitar feedback, drum rolls, and more abstract elements and heavily processed vocals that resembles a darker, less isolating sound that guitarists Hampson and Scott Dawson would pioneer later in Main.
Both "Breath Into Me" and "From Centre to Wave" bring back the overdriven blast rock that characterized the opening of the album, the latter especially benefitting from producer Paul Kendall’s touch, with the closing resembling speakers being slowly disconnected from the player, the sound becoming more and more distant and tinny with every second before roaring back with a blast of feedback. The nearly 10 minute closer "Be Here Now" is also a slower and more sparse track, allowing multitracked guitar notes to trail off into space over a simple, but steady rhythm, closing the final album with one of the band’s more delicate moments.
The bonus disc here contains both pre-released tracks as well as a few rough demo versions of the album tracks that, while not amazing on their own, still make for a good listen. The opening pair of "The Nail Will Burn (Burn Out)" and "Shot With a Diamond" both were bonus tracks on the original CD issue of A Gilded Eternity, the former being a slightly more straightforward, trebly mix of the track, while the latter is a mostly instrumental (with the exception of Apocalypse Now dialog samples) repetitive drone of basic guitar clatter and metronomic percussion, also a good foreshadowing of what the band would go on to do in their post-Loop careers.
The demos are also nothing too drastically different: the instrumental early draft of "Arc-Lite" unfortunately suffers from its lack of vocals, focusing too much on the repetitive elements of the band without the more dynamic counterbalance, and the also vocalless take on "Vapour" is not drastically different from the final version, just slightly rawer, but structurally the same. "The Nail Will Burn" demo version is quite similar to the other two versions, but the shorter take of “Be Here Now” is much more interesting: it’s a harder edged version of what would finally be released. It’s still sparse and vast, yet there is a bit more clang and grind to it, reframing the track completely differently than the previously released one.
The best part of this disc though is the band’s third and final Peel Session, which, like the others in this reissue campaign, was also available on the Wolf Flow collection. "Afterglow" is functionally the same as the album version, but "From Centre to Wave" is given even more room to breathe, and the rawer pseudo-live edge of the BBC studios causes it to a be a different beast entirely. Finally, the closing "Sunburst" is my personal favorite moment here. A B-side on the "Arc-Lite" single, here it is stripped down to repetitive drum rolls and a mix of guitar chord drone and crunchy squalls, all proceeding along with a slowness and sadness unmatched by most.
Each Loop album was such a different beast, though all still connected through vast space and overdriven guitar bonds that makes it impossible to pick a favorite. Here perhaps it is their most fully realized work that unfortunately signaled their demise. Like the first two albums though, it is essential listening for anyone who claims to enjoy shoegaze/drone/space rock/whatever it’s called these days.
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