In 2013, 23 years after the band released their third album,
Loop were reactivated by leader
Robert Hampson. During the dormancy,
Hampson built a remarkable discography that went farther out and pushed traditional rock to the margins, first with
Main -- originally in collaboration with
Loop guitarist Scott Dowson -- and then under his own name. The
Loop lineup heard on
A Gilded Eternity was reintroduced at the All Tomorrow's Parties festival at Camber Sands in East Sussex, England and played some additional dates. By the end of 2014, the band consisted of
Hampson and three new members. This is the first in a series of EP-length releases -- termed "bulletins" by
Hampson -- from that lineup.
Loop were so efficient with a specific sound and presentation that there was no need to deviate from either. Glancing at familiar astrological allusions in the sleeve design and track titles of
Array 1, one familiar with the band's past work can easily imagine the makeup of these four songs. Indeed, the guitars stab and swarm, the drums tumble and pummel, and the bass alternates between low pulsing and melodic repetition.
Hampson's vocals are ominous if never seething, closer to his approach on past
Loop highlights like "From Centre to Wave" than on "This Is Where You End." The EP leads with a pair of sludgy pysch jams, decelerates for the slightly abrasive "drumless space" of "Coma," and closes with the side-long "Radial," which begins and ends with shifting drones that flank seven minutes of searing menace that recall early, "the Can"-era
Can. ~ Andy Kellman