Stuart David followed Looper's debut Up A Tree with The Geometrid (Subpop, 2000), an equally inventive outing, half electronica and half folk, that redefines the roles of drum machines and synthesizers in popular music without surrendering his trademark charming, naif, homely feeling (in contrast with avantgarde's austere stances). David's roots (and attitude towards music) hark back to the Canterbury progressive scene: Mondo '77 is reminiscent of Lol Coxhill's populist fanfares and Robert Wyatt's eerie folly. The pretty lullaby Up A Tree that crowned the debut gets a follow up in On The Flipside, that again resurrects Nico's enchanted tone on the first Velvet Underground. Modern Song exemplifies the praxis of most tracks, a cunning cross between sonic pastiche, techno beat and fairy tale. The method resembles Brian Eno's electro-pop vignettes (Bug Rain) David's process can be, at times, too amateurish. He wastes half of the ideas for lack of a good singer, and can't resist some counterproductive musical doodling in the arrangements. He takes himself seriously only at the end, with Money Hair, a tune that could be Brit-pop's next hit, a splendid hybrid of bubblegum's melodic progressions (think Tommy Roe) and soul's horn fanfares (think Wilson Picket).
Looper has grown and become a full-fledged multimedia act, thanks to the avantgarde sculptures in progress by Karn David (David's wife).

Following several contributions to Hollywood soundtracks, The Snare (Mute, 2002) betrays a cinematic/noir quality that has more to do with Barry Adamson than with the first two Looper albums. Stuart David concocts pop ballads such as The Snare, arranged for vibes and atmospheric piano over a syncopated Latin beat, He whispers instead of crooning, but this album basically marks a return to the roots of pop music. Good Girls could be a leftover from a Nick Drake session, the joyful vibes drowned in mournful cello lines and in a cryptic piano motif. Sugarcane hangs a thin soul melody on jazzy flute and trombone. A female singer delivers the folk tale of Peacock Johnson, framed by hypnotic vibes and funereal trombone. The swinging blues of Lover's Leap packs the most power, but it's still mild by any standard. David's voice is not exactly Pavarotti's, his melodies are not exactly immortal, and others have introduced electronic keyboards and drum machines into the format of pop music long before him, and occasionally his "retro" style can sound cheesy (the female choir in She's A Knife is positively Fifties), but David shows promise in the way he pens a "neutral" mood, which is not dejected and is not "spleen", it is not as languid as trip-hop and it is not as melodramatic as Nick Cave. In a sense, the cheesiest of his songs, Fucking Around, is also the most intriguing, as it sounds like a suicide's parody of Broadway show tunes. Ultimately, David dwells in an emotional limbo that is the exact opposite of a movie soundtrack. His music negates its own assumtions.