Showing posts with label Loop Guru. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Loop Guru. Show all posts

Wednesday, January 12, 2022

Loop Guru - Catalogue Of Desires

North South/Hypnotic: 1996/1999

It took me damn near a decade, but I finally got another Loop Guru album! Not that the group is some ultra-obscure, super-underground, impossibly niche act with a music catalogue rarer than cerium, but they haven't much luck in North American distribution either. For whatever reason, Waveform Records only brought over Duniya, while alt rock and industrial print World Domination Recordings handled Amrita. Not exactly the most compatible fusion of genres there, though considering alt rock label Mammoth Records distributed Banco de Gaia's early albums here, maybe that's just how things rolled for world beaters in the States.

By the end of the '90s, however, World Domination had folded, so Loop Guru turned to “release whatever we can get our hands on” print Hypnotic for State-side handling of their album The Fountains Of Paradise. Guess that has them rubbing shoulders with 808 State, System 7, and FSOL in that department. The label also re-issued Catalogue Of Desires Vol 3, an album a few years old by that point, and had seen limited distribution by World Domination prior. Swell beans for those who may have missed it the first time around, which is about the only reason I can see for this one getting a re-issue, as I doubt anyone but fans of Loop Guru would be interested in this record.

Don't get me wrong, it's certainly an interesting outing from the group. Though quite adept at uptempo tunes, Loop Guru truly gained their rep with long-form, meditative, ambient dub jams, so it's only natural they'd take the concept to LP length. The Catalogue Of Desires series was their outlet for exploring such sonic roads, the first two originally only available on tape (they've recently been uploaded to Bandcamp). Vol. 3 was the first to try making some hay from these excursions with CD roll-outs, but since that'd be too confusing for Americans, Hypnotic just called this one Catalogue Of Desires.

Twenty tracks in total make up this album, but calling them all 'tracks' is being generous, several minute-long interludes breaking things up between the groovier centrepieces. Even then, many longer tracks are mostly ambient outings with manipulated orchestral sections or sampled Far East music. Long stretches will pass by where you'll either feel lost in a deep trance, or spinning wheels. I'm naturally more of the former, making Catalogue Of Desires a bit of a challenge to indulge a full listen without completely zoning out. Fortunately, proper world beat tracks like Catalyst, Almost, Susleone, and Out Of The Dark Room do a good job knocking you out of such a doze.

In some ways, Catalogue Of Desires reminds me of FSOL's many Environments albums. There's the loose, free-form music making, multiple tracks of wildly varying length, and psychedelic tongue-in-cheek titles (After Dark With The Reef Tones, Nature Of The Whole, The Pear-Tree Illusion). Obviously, Loop Guru are rougher around the edges on the production department, but still, conceptually kindred spirits with latter-day FSOL just the same.

Tuesday, January 29, 2019

Loop Guru - Amrita (...All These And The Japanese Soup Warriors) (2019 Update)

North South: 1995

(click here to read my original TranceCritic review)

It's been over half a decade since I last talked up Loop Guru, and I still haven't gathered any more of their albums. Not that they're super-hard to find or anything, most going for a tidy pop on the Amazon market now, but something keeps me from finally diving into their domain proper-like. Trepidation, that's it. A worry that they just won't live up to whatever expectation I have on them, even with the limited amount of exposure I've thus far provided myself. Wait, how is that even an excuse now? Most of their albums are also on Spotify (though not this one, oddly), so if I want to hear them to confirm my unfounded fears, I can at any time. No, there must be something else, something buried deep in my subconscious that's holding me back. I wonder what it is?

Actually, I think I know: no matter what, I will never recapture the feeling I had when I first heard Amrita. It's not a terribly significant event, but it's a vivid moment, furiously flashing across my memory membranes every time I hear Diwana or Often Again. It was a few months after I'd moved out on my own into Vancouver, and I'd just gotten this CD on one of my trips to an A&B Sound (RIP), intended for a TranceCritic review because why not.

Sometime in the wee minutes past midnight and feeling the buzz of a smoked bowl, I got the munchies and decided to walk the five blocks to a 7/11 for some snackables. As I'm strolling in the clear spring evening, the swinging tribal sounds of Loop Guru playing from my discman, I come to a startling revelation: I'm honestly and truly free, the boundless opportunities of bachelorhood open before me. I'm living in my own apartment, doing recreational drugs when I want without worry of neighbours or roommates, going for strolls in the middle of the night with nary a care or concern of where I wander, in a city I hadn't even dreamed to live in but a few years past. And this all dawned upon me while listening to this album. Now, I'm not saying it wouldn't have occurred to me if I hadn't been playing Amrita at the time, but I cannot deny something about the music here made everything click right in that moment.

And without a doubt, there is a freeing jubilation in Amrita, the sort of tribal exuberance that makes you want to kick off your shoes and dance up a dust storm in the sandy floors of an outdoor party. Yeah, Papasus and Fumi show their dubbier, chill side too, but damn, those drums in Gianyar! That chant in Yayli! That flute in Diwana! That rhythm in Sun! Can you blame me for being hesitant in exploring Loop Guru's discography further? How could anything else they do top such ebullience?

(sorry, that seems like the sort of cheeky word they'd use in liner notes)

Saturday, October 5, 2013

Loop Guru - Duniya (The Intrinsic Passion Of Mysterious Joy)

Waveform Records: 1995

Well of course I’m gonna buy more than just one act’s collection of music from Waveform this past week - it’s not called ‘splurging’ for nothing. Loop Guru’s another in a long list of acts I mean to gather more of, but never get around to doing so. Their relationship with Waveform isn’t as extensive as others, however, this here Duniya album their only offering. It’s also a re-release of the album of the same name that came out a year prior on Nation Records, a tidbit of info not so surprising since most of Waveform’s early artist albums were primarily Stateside re-releases.

Also not so surprising – at least where the ‘90s are concerned – is how this version of Duniya is quite different from the original. Whether due to licensing issues, copyright claims, or oddball label marketing, European and American copies of albums seldom matched each other, and it seems Loop Guru were no less a victim (benefactor?) of this business. Tunes Hymn and Senseless are gone, though we get a new cut, Shrine Of Sringar, in their place. Also, aside from the final run of three tracks, everything’s been re-arranged. Whether this makes for stronger album flow, I haven’t a clue, since I’ve never heard the Nation Records version of Duniya.

But to be fair, this is the first time I’ve heard the Waveform one too, so I've no basis of comparison. That said, Duniya sure reminds me of the Guru's follow-up album Amrita. Since they came out within a year of each other, some similarities would be inevitable, but this is almost down to a t', in song arrangements and track sequencing (at least the Waveform version).

This being the earlier album though, Duniya's rougher around the edges. The whole endless world-beat loop production is if full effect, but many of the beats used sound directly lifted from early '90s UK acid house, unfortunately rather dated for a '94/'95 collection of ethno-fusion tuneage. I know Loop Guru's whole shtick in those days was to invoke a tribal, meditative trance with all the repetition, but it’s difficult getting into the chakra flow with beats reminding me of EMF instead. Whatever. It's only a problem for the first few tracks anyway, after which the songcraft does get better (or sucks you in despite itself), so I guess Waveform were smart in getting the duff cuts out of the way early.

Another similarity between the two is the inclusion of an extended dub jam at the end (did Loop Guru do this for every album?). On here, it lasts whopping twenty-one-plus minutes, putting your patience for such music to its ultimate test. Geez, even Bill Laswell isn’t that indulgent. No wonder Part 4 isn’t on the original Third Chamber CD – there's no damned room for it! Tune's fine for what it is though, as is the rest of Duniya. Some of the world-beat attributes will definitely come off dated, but that’s never stopped folks from enjoying Deep Forest’s early work either.

Saturday, December 26, 2009

Loop Guru - Amrita (...All These And The Japanese Soup Warriors) (Original TC Review)














North South: Cat. # GURU 200CD
Released 1995

Track List:
1. Sheikh (3:58)
2. Yayli (7:29)
3. Diwana (5:38)
4. Soulus (4:48)
5. Papasus (6:04)
6. Often Again (5:07)
7. Sun (5:01)
8. Epic Song (4:47)
9. Gianyar (7:45)
10. Fumi (13:32)
11. Plane Shift (6:10)


(2010 Update:
Track-by-track is still a chore to read, but at least the preamble to these reviews was getting better. I was a bit surprised by the resurgence of ethnic sampling in hip techno circles in recent years, though very little of what they did was as vibrant as what we have here. Mind, they are very different scenes.)



IN BRIEF: World samplings from the gurus of loops.

Truth be told, I wasn't a one-genre whore from the get-go. While I may say a great deal of the early 90s euro wave initially sparking my enthusiasm for EDM, there was yet another style I was enjoying along side it, though I didn't make as big of a deal about it -which is kind of strange, really, considering this style is probably one of the most commercially successful worldwide. I guess as a young, rebellious teenager, I almost felt guilty for enjoying the same music my mother did.

Dabbled with as far back as Peter Gabriel, and perhaps even The Beatles, it wasn't until the emergence of such acts like Enigma and Deep Forest that the genre loosely termed 'world beat' gained mainstream notice. The idea of throwing ethnic influences over techno rhythms sparked an amazing wave of producers attempting to cross cultural boundaries with music, a most novel idea considering our enjoyment of rhythms and melodies is one of the few things all of humanity seems to have in common.

However, because of the cultural diversity on this planet, fusing disparate music styles can be trickier than it seems. What may make sense in one part of the world will not necessarily meld fluently with another region. It isn't enough to just take a chanting pygmy sample and stick it with a sitar sample -there needs to be some cohesion between the two. Often the best producers in this field (Delerium, Banco de Gaia, etc.) will take such samples and create rhythms and melodies around them. The bad producers (too many goa trance artists to name) just lump samples on top of each other and hope for the best.

Of course, ask almost any world beat producer what kind of music they make, and they'll immediately claim they produce anything but world beat. I suppose they have a just reason for it. The term world beat (or even worse, world music) is even more ambiguously useless than 'electronica'. What exactly makes a song fall under that category? Certain sounds may be ethnic to one region but not to another. Maybe it's referring to music that isn't region specific, but there are several forms of music like that that don't fall under the umbrella of world beat. Ah, well. Humanity has never been all that good at giving names to music.

Anyhow, as I was saying, world beat held just as much interest to me as nearly any other style of EDM and, over the years, I'd come across some incredible acts in the process. One group that eluded me, though, was Loop Guru.

As a huge fan of Banco de Gaia, I'd often heard of Loop Guru mentioned in conversations of similar artists, sometimes even seeing them appearing together on compilations. I'd been curious, of course, but never really gave it much thought to seek out any of their albums until just recently. Having heard a few offerings of their work on compilations, a part of me feared they'd turn out to be nothing more than a Banco de Gaia-lite. However, after time and time again hearing the praises of the group, I decided to give in and check them out.

Starting out this particular album called Amrita is Sheikh. First thing I notice is this is very sample heavy music, looping over and over and over throughout this song. Mostly utilizing Indian sitars, woodwinds, and chants, not much really happens on this song as things more or less loop for four minutes without much variation. And, unfortunately, the samples used don't mesh all that well either. It doesn't inspire much but the rhythm is fairly energetic, if unwaveringly loop-refic, so I get the impression Loop Guru made this track merely as an opener to the album. At least, I hope this is the case. I'd hate to have to sit through an album of stuff like this. If I wanted that, I'd purchase some bad goa trance.

Yayli brings things more into focus, opening with chants and wails as rhythms gradually build for some two minutes. Once we get settled into alternating looping samples that feed off the tribal energy established, we are treated to quite an infectious track. While most of the guitar and woodwind samples are established early on, there is a great deal of mixing them up throughout so they never get redundantly repetitive as it did in the opener. Strangely, though, once the song ends, a little interlude plays out which sounds like something you might have heard on an old Super Nintendo RPG. At least, it does to me -damned youthful nostalgia.

Diwana does the same trick as heard in Yayli but the samples used are even better! The chant is quite nice, the rhythm more funky, and a haunting flute plays off of Indian pipes wonderfully. There are a bunch of other samples floating about providing texture and gives this track much needed depth that wasn't quite as prevalent as in the first two. Of note, I might add, is aside from some of the rhythms, I've yet to hear much in the way of actual electronic sounds in these tracks. It seems Loop Guru are more interested in using the samples they've come across to do the music for them rather than augmenting them with other hardware. It's ballsy, I have to admit, but Sheikh notwithstanding, it's worked so far. Hopefully it doesn't catch up to them later, though.

We get treated to a bit more of a Western feel rather than the Far East in Soulus, as the samples used here consist mostly of Gregorian chants and orchestral bits. Not too much else gets thrown in, though, as this is a fairly simple, loopy track like Sheikh. Fortunately, the elements in use are more cohesive and Soulus doesn't run out of steam before it's over.

Loop Guru slows things down now with Papasus, a wonderful little grooving number of dubbed out rhythms and simple, subdued melodies (including a sampled voice of Sussan Seihim). I'll admit I have a real weakness for music of this sort (most commonly referred to as ambient dub) but a number of others will find this a bit too noodly for their tastes.

Often Again is a rather mellow excursion of shuffling rhythms, chants of both folksy and Gregorian in nature, and lo-fi flutes that wouldn't sound all that out of place in a Boards Of Canada release. Beyond that, this is still a mostly loopy affair, although the flutes do sound more natural thanks to the longer length of those loops. Also, has anyone noticed those tweeting birds hiding throughout this album so far? I thought it was coming from outside at first but then I remembered that birds don't tweet in the middle of the night.

Loop Guru has managed to lull me into a blissful sense of serenity with these last two tracks but Sun opens up with something a little more paranoid sounding. Then, quite suddenly, brisk, crisp percussion leaps out at you, startling you into alertness again. Good thing too, as Sun is a fun track you wouldn't want to sleep through. Plenty of samples get thrown about here, mostly of an energetic nature to rile you up for a good ol' hippie dance. If I was in a flower field listening to this, or even just an outdoor festival, I could definitely see myself leaving a hacky-sack, drum, or bong circle to get my shake on to this track.
And this next one as well! Epic Song really doesn't have much to offer melodically with all the folksy singing and flutes, but I quite like the rhythm to this one. Much more tribal and less loopy than what else has been on offer with Amrita.

Of course, by this point I'm getting a little cocky about figuring out Loop Guru's tricks, namely making use of a wide assortment of ethnic samples arranged into interesting, even enjoyable songs. And Gianyar starts out just as expected with some peppy rhythms and lo-fi flutes samples. Less than a minute, though, I'm thrown for a 'loop' (hohoho!) when an orchestral sample starts to play, but in reverse! Playing tape loops backwards can be musically disastrous in many instances but it works here. Even better, though, is an additional melancholy eastern flute melody that follows it, and a rousing orchestral sample at peaks. This is some great stuff to listen to, even if the rhythm section barely changes at all from beginning to end.

Fumi is more noodly ambient dub but, unlike Papasus, this one goes for more jazz influences than anything else. At over thirteen minutes long, it does meander at great length between bass guitar, low Eastern woodwinds, and Gregorian chants (always good in a pinch) while sparse percussion bobbles along. It is nice to listen to for a while but, really, it does go on for an almost tedious amount of time if you pay too much attention to it. Best to just zone out while it is playing. Smoke a bowl if that's your game, too.

And, finishing off, we have Plane Shift, a mellow outro of a track that makes use of those always reliable Gregorian chants while Arabian flutes and percussion loop along at a steady pace. Yeah, it doesn't really go anywhere but it's pleasant enough to listen to in any event.

And really, that kind of sums up the whole experience of listening to Amrita; aside from a couple of tracks that create some much needed depth, most of what's on here is more about what Loop Guru can do with their samples rather than creating songs around them. Yet, for all the lack of diversity in each of these tracks, there is an undeniable enjoyment to listening to their music as many of the samples do stick to your mind. This being an earlier example of their work, I'd have to hear some of their more recent work to see if they refined this template more to make their more energetic tracks not quite as, well, loopy.

Incidentally, if you are wondering if they give sample credits here, I believe they do but write them out in such cryptic ways ('astoral music', 'mythical mellowflutes', 'the sound of one hand clapping', 'heavy metal guitar with so many effects that it doesn’t sound heavy, metallic or guitar-like or anything else from our realm of understanding the nature of multidimensional matter transfer', 'a very big fish'), you'd have a hell of a time figuring them all out. Probably how they like it, too.


Score: 7/10

ACE TRACKS:
Diwana
Papasus


Written by Sykonee. Originally published 2005 for TranceCritic.com.© All rights reserved.

Things I've Talked About

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