Loop Guru

Loop Guru's project reached another peak of baroque creativity with the extremely complex and sophisticated collage of Amrita (North South, 1995), eleven mirages of deafening rhythms, fairy vocals and thick production. Instruments range from bells to harps, tampuras to mellotrons, birds to horses, although their sounds are distorted and mixed until each loses its acoustic properties and becomes just a voice in the crowd.
The goal seems to turn Enigma into a psychedelic and disco experience. Needless to say, where Enigma is relaxing Loop Guru is neurotic. Loop Guru's dance music is always an intense experience, whether feverish and tribal as in Yayli (with U2-esque guitar jangling), thunderous as in Soulus (with waves of medieval droning), dissonant as in Giangyar. Sheikh is a psychedelic raga updated to techno: a propulsive beat injects life into a thick collage of voices and instruments, with sharp, epic trumpets and lamenting female chants soaring over the roaring symphony. This is world folk music arranged the way the Incredible String Band would do it in the 1990s and set to a speedy beat.
The ensemble's main achievement rests in the way they paste together the different sounds. Diwana is a spectacular essay of counterpoint, welding melodic trumpet, mellotron and muezzin-like chanting in one organic flow. Often Again is a bold juxtaposition of tenor singing (that could be out of an eastern-European folk song), mechanical syncopated beat and distorted keyboard melody. The effect is to disintegrate the unit of time and space, to dislocate musical DNA. Loop Guru enjoys throwing sopranos (Sun), tenors (Epic Song) and gregorian choirs (Plane Shift into the mix, as if trying to fuse opera with dance music and world music.
The 13-minute tour de force of Fumi summarizes the main themes of Loop Guru's music (ethnic, gregorian, tribal) within the structure of a minimalist concert at an unusually slow (and almost dub) pace. After so much disco ecstasy, the listener is lulled to sleep by a mystical trance.
Jamuud's mellotron reigns over the most majestic pieces, its lysergic tone working as a call to arms or a lament for the dead or a drill into the subconscious.

Meanwhile, the ensemble continued experimenting with tapes. The technique of “generative collage” was delivered across three limited-edition cassettes titled Catalogue of Desires. The first two cassettes were later reissued as The Fountains Of Paradise (Hypnotic, 1999). The third volume was released as Catalogues Of Desires Vol 3 (North Sound, 1996). Surprisingly, the music abandons the rhythms that had made them famous, but it fails to replace them with equally creative electronic arrangements. Ethnic tones (largely due to sampling) are still omnipresent, but they have become pure sonic stereotypes within an ambient flow of organic sound.

Loop Bites Dog (North South, 1997) is a schizophrenic work, attempting to surpass the limits of its predecessor in two directions: on one hand, deepening the mystical ecstasy of Don Cherry (White Light) and Terry Riley (Riley's Ants), and on the other, emphasizing the melodicism of Peter Gabriel’s techno-funk (Karma Marga). Hidden within the increasingly dense and multifaceted mix are high-class experiments, such as the fusion of psychedelic music and gamelan dance attempted on Out Here.

Time may diminish the significance of their musical “melting pop,” which is, all things considered, a popularization of ideas from Peter Gabriel and Enya, but it will leave intact the qualities of their most graceful songs, such as Aphrodite's Shoe and Karma Marga.

The Third Chamber (NorthSouth, 1997) comprises five movements, including the one already released on Duniya, and represents the most contemplative side of their art, on the border between cosmic music, ambient music, and ethnic music.

In 2000 Loop Guru were working on several projects: an album of psychedelic pop tunes, re-inheriting and enhancing the eccentric English pop of the late 1960s; a collection of music concreate and electro-acoustic experimental landscapes; an album of devotional music.

Sam Dodson and Linda Finger's side project Slipper released the album Invisible Movies (Rephlex, 2000), devoted to a deranged form of atmospheric jazz (unfortunately ruined by snippets of conversations). Collaborators include Damned's Rat Scabies, Nidahl Bulbul and Liz Fletcher. It was followed by the EP Earworms (Mechanism, 2002), which better defined the experiment: Sheep is like a dissonant version of Rip Rig & Panic's hyper-active jump blues, Hello is an oneric litany a` la Robert Wyatt, Smokin' is cool jazz for a noir film, Lala Dos injects swampy beat, dissonant instruments and operatic vocals into the same framework, etc. Zoon Sandwich (Mechanism, 2002), Slipper's second full-length, exhibits a calmer, more sophisticated production via increasingly dreamy, sleepy and anemic pop-jazz shuffles such as Feelin' Good, Lull, Narcissus that border on postmodern surgical operations on black music (Blues And Lights, Da Force). The boldest tracks (Klaw, 2 Wah) are mostly "atmospheres" of songs; shadows. Rhythms have become much more inventive, less jazzy and not intrusive at all. Slipper is now an experiment in evolving the pop song towards a more abstract and intimate format.

In the meantime, Sam Dodson and Jym's side project Thaw released Holy Cat (Elsewhen, 2002), an album that fuses sacred vocal music, electronica and tribal rhythm. Adi, for example, is a propulsive trance-inducing track that overlays frantic swing rhythm, loops of heavy-metal guitar, female cantillating getting more and more visceral, and keyboards simulating rhythm'n'blues horns. A softer mood a` la trip-hop pervades No Separation (sensual vocals, smooth breakbeats, fat bass lines, oneiric soundscape) and Simplicity (jazzy crooning over disjointed polyrhythms and sound effects). Jaya is an incursion in primitive futuris (African beats and Brazilian syncopation, jazzy bass, Indian flute, orchestral undercurrents). The most hypnotic song is I Bow Down, which fuses the pounding beat of techno, the vocal repetition of Buddhist liturgy, and the electronic flourishes of Moroder's disco-music. Closer The Universal World Prayer is a straightforward song that employs neoclassical plucking and spacey electronics over an upbeat rhythm, to seal the album with a spiritual message. Unfortunately the duo expands the worst ideas and barely sketches the best ones.

Bathtime (Hypnotic, 2003), Loop Guru's first album in five years, displays the usual elegance (and dexterity at studio devices). The ethnic trance dub and/or ethereal pop of Today, Spring Promenade Sentimentale and Marble One is balanced by the two eight-minute fantasias, the Indian-sounding Devotion No.1 and the dancefloor-oriented Devotion No.4, and by the two numbers that leave the reassuring quiet of Loop Guru's traditional style, the nervous and complex Truffaut's Hat Bathtime.

The 20-song Elderberry Shiftglass (2006) continued the exploration of this genre at the border of ambient music, exotica, psychedelic rock and plunderphonics.

The Other Chamber (2021) contains longer improvisations: 4:45am Daybreak (10:45), 4:00pm Horizonless (24:05), and 5:30am Sun Haze (10:25).