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DESCRIPTION:
Heavy, drugged-out and utterly hypnotic, Loop invoked a dark, trippy sound that was unlike most other UK underground rock bands in the late 1980's. Blending together the trance-inducing psych riffage of Hawkwind, the stoned Detroit garage stomp of the MC5 and Stooges, and the mesmeric motorik throb of Can, Loop were a band whose sound was a mirror image of their name: cyclic, circular riffs pounded out over heavy duty propulsive drumming, plowing through thick clouds of feedback and lysergic lead guitar, with dreamy, disinterested vocals drifting in through a field of reverb. Along with the Spacemen 3, these bands breathed new life into the idea behind space/drug rock, but where Spacemen 3 were super wasted and spaced out, Loop had a much heavier, crunchier sound, with guitars that could be heavy and distorted enough to sound almost metallic. Hell, Loop were heavy enough to have ties with Godflesh, for fuck's sake, as the legendary Godflesh/Loop split 7" will attest. All of Loop's output has been out of print for years and tough to find, but we're finally seeing their albums being reissued through Reactor, in gorgeous new packages with loads of extras, starting with the band's first two albums.
As awesome as Loop were, they've mostly enjoyed a cult underground following and aren't well known outside of psych/noise/avant rock circles. I think they were ahead of their time in so many ways, and if you dropped Loop in front of an audience at a current heavy psych show, people who had never heard of them would probably go nuts over them. Huge, buzzing metallic guitars, head-nodding riffs looped over and over, big booming motorik drums, simple three chord riffs grinding over and over, super catchy and blown and soaked in effects and feedback, the singer's narcotized crooning just barely cutting through the thick haze of drugged out rock. So goddamn great. They were like this massive supercharged krautrock band, but overloaded with trippy effects. After Loop disbanded in the early 1990's following the release of A Gilded Eternity, members would go on to form other projects like Hair And Skin Trading Company and Main, but none of those projects were as heavy and spaced-out and druggy as Loop.
1987's Heaven's End was the debut album from Loop, and when you compare this to the rest of their albums, this is their most psychedelic stuff. The sound here is rough and noisy, all buzzing simple riffage and squalls of trippy feedback, almost sounding like a heavy kraut/space rock version of Jesus And Mary Chain at times. The album kicks off with opener "Soundhead", and it's a rocker, slinging loads of wah-wah lead guitar over a simple two-chord riff and pounding trance drums, the stoned vocals echoing through a veil of reverb, and then it's into one of their classic jams, "Straight To Your Heart", where the band gets heavy as they slide into a slow sludgy riff that loops over and over, drums locked into a hypnotic throb, the super catchy chorus and those zonked ethereal vocals lodging themselves into your brain. The band gets even slower and tripper with "Forever", a seriously psychedelic jam with trebly, heavily distorted guitars and a super stretched out, minimal drumbeat, all of it surrounded by spacey effects and distorted whir. The title track
goes back to the midpaced hypno-rock, a basic Stooges riff hammered into eternity and riding on waves of backwards-looped guitar and processed drums, thick and lysergic and heavy as hell. "To Real To Feel" is another super catchy slab of grooving space-rock, droning and dark and mesmerizing. The rest of the album follows suit, each song centering around a central riff and jamming it out into a massive hypnotic groove while everywhere around it swirl all kinds of feedback and guitar effects and narcoleptic mumbling. So fucking awesome.
Reactor's deluxe reissue of Heavens End delivers the goods, presenting the disc in a cool Stoughton style gatefold sleeve and printed inner sleeves, and it also features a second disc that has alternates mixes of the songs "Soundhead" and "Head On" (which in this rougher state actually sound even heavier than the actual album versions), a cover of Suicide's "Rocket USA", and three tracks from their 1987 Peel Session that features an elongated, spacey version of "Straight To Your Heart". This and the rest of the Loop reissues are absolutely crucial. One of the greatest psych-space rock bands ever, and anyone who loves newer bands like Circle, A Place To Bury Strangers, and Religious Knives, oh man, you gotta hear this...
© CRUCIAL BLAST
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Don't forget to check out all of our other CRUCIAL BLAST -approved AVANT METAL / MUTANT NOISE releases in our Ebay store and on auction. Lots of OOP and RARE items too!
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[CONDITION+INFO]
BRAND NEW, UNPLAYED ITEM.
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| ::: CRUCIAL BLAST: SPECIALIZING IN EXPERIMENTAL METAL, BLACK PSYCHEDELIA, HEAVY AVANT MUSIC, AND OTHER CUTTING-EDGE HEAVINESS :::
Crucial Blast is an independant underground label and online shop specializing in cutting edge, experimental heavy music and related cultural artifacts, with a particular focus on avant-metal, heavy noise/industrial, dark ambience, infernal psychedelia, and hardcore improv/free-jazz. You'll find everything from art-damaged European metalcore to amplifier-exploding psychedelic drones to earth-shaking post-Ayler destructo-jazz in our listings, which we update every two weeks with both brand new releases and rare finds.
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::: SHIPPING AND PAYMENT INFO :::
Payment is expected within SEVEN DAYS from the end of auction/buy it now purchase.
WE DO COMBINE SHIPPING ON MULTIPLE ITEMS ! In order to have us combine shipping, you MUST wait for us to send you a revised invoice for your order after you have clicked on BUY IT NOW for ALL of the items you want.
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CANADA/MEXICO: for LPs, shipping for the first LP is determined by weight, location being shipped to, and shipping method; any additional single LPs are $2.00 each, and any additional MULTI-LP SETS are $4.00 each
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REST OF WORLD: $6.50 for the first STANDARD CD / DVD, $2.00 EACH any additional standard CDs / DVDs
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REST OF WORLD: $8.50 for the first STANDARD 7" EP, and $2.00 EACH any additional standard 7" EPs
REST OF WORLD: $4.75 for the first STANDARD CASSETTE TAPE, $1.25 EACH any additional standard CASSETTE TAPES
REST OF WORLD: for LPs, shipping for the first LP is determined by weight, location being shipped to, and shipping method; any additional single LPs are $6.00 each, and any additional STANDARD MULTI-LP SETS are $9.00 each.
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Orders are generally shipped within 24 hours of receipt of payment. If an item happens to be out of stock, we will contact you immediately to let you know whether it is sold out or if we are expecting a restock within a short amount of time; however, please keep in mind that we work very hard to make sure that our live Ebay inventory reflects only what we actually have physically in our warehouse, so this is usually not an issue.
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