LOOP | Interview | New album, ‘Sonancy’
UK psych rock legends LOOP recently released their first new album, ‘Sonancy’ in 32 years via Cooking Vinyl.
Formed in South London in the mid-1980s, LOOP blazed a trail with their potent mix of motorik beats and heavy guitar riffs, recording a trio of brilliant albums that set the indie charts alight before imploding in 1990 after the release of album number three, ‘A Gilded Eternity’. As critics enthused at the time, LOOP were the sound of Suicide jamming with the Stooges aboard a spaceship built by Hawkwind and piloted by CAN. They were post-psychedelic, pre-shoegaze figureheads in a world of anodyne pop jangle and baggy rhythms, and even their closest contemporaries like Spacemen 3 and My Bloody Valentine didn’t plough such a distinctive furrow as theirs.
“Style wise, it’s incredibly different, going back to thinking about guitars and guitar sounds. Obviously you have to take into consideration things like percussive elements such as drums, which I haven’t been using in my other projects; but this is the mind-set that makes up LOOP.” So says Robert Hampson, the indefatigable visionary behind LOOP, whose eagerly anticipated fourth LP is the perfect document for these strange times. Dynamic, dystopian, righteously angry and unashamedly LOOP-ian, it’s an album that marks a vital re-emergence for Hampson and co.
After LOOP’s initial demise, Hampson pivoted away from guitars with electronic project Main, before moving to France and hooking up with fabled experimental collective Groupe de Recherches Musical (GRM). LOOP were a distant memory, one that Hampson seemed unwilling to revisit, so it was a delightful surprise when they remerged in 2013 to play and curate the All Tomorrow’s Parties (ATP) festival, followed by a performance personally requested by Robert Smith of The Cure at Meltdown Festival in 2018.
“The dystopian nightmare has become reality”
Wow, incredible. You’re releasing a new album after 32 years. What led you to start working on it?
Robert Hampson: The right time and the right place. For the last few years, it was always there to be done, but mostly finances held it back. Sadly, I’ve never had the money to finance it myself or I would have. But chaos follows LOOP around like a lost dog, so often, things “get in the way”. Hopefully the next one will be sooner rather than later.
So the lockdown was creative for you?
Not really. The album was written but lockdown restricted it being made. Typically, I had written it and was ready to go but COVID-19 “got in the way” – I can’t tell you how many times we had to reschedule the recordings. Even when we were in the studio, we were all recording separately because of the restrictions. But that wasn’t the problem, it was purely the length of time to get it finished. And then we had this “vinyl crisis” so it was virtually a year old by the time it actually came out. The irony is not lost on me.
“I’ve never been so fucking angry making an album”
And now that the pandemic is finally coming to an end, we are experiencing a horrible war. Humanity will never learn… What was the reason to reactivate LOOP? Maybe a need to express some feelings that are only able to come out within LOOP’s music?
I’ve said it many times of late. I’ve never been so fucking angry making an album. The delays were a problem, but the whole handling of the epidemic in the UK was fucked. The government is nothing but clueless privileged fuckwits who couldn’t run a raffle unless it was corrupt. Humanity has been ravaged by social media, people are getting more dim by the day through misinformation, lies and general self-importance because it’s all ME ME ME. And that’s where they want us. The only truth Trump ever said was that he loved the ill-educated. And we have the fat controller man child version 2 here now, who seems an immovable object. The dystopian nightmare has become reality. What was once imagined has now become a state of play, it makes seers of the likes of Ballard, Dick… and most importantly now, Margaret Atwood. All in the name of good Christian values? My fucking arse! I don’t believe in sky fairies, but this isn’t what the bibles are meant to be telling us if you believe in all that mumbo jumbo. Thoughts and Prayers won’t save you, the damnation is thoroughly brought to you by the very people you vote for, if you voted for this then you fucking well own it and you will held responsible when the rest of us awaken from our slumber. Which cannot come soon enough. As Lou Reed so rightly said in his smack haze, “you’re gonna reap just what you sow”. Well, those mendacious chickens of wanton chaos are feeding in our backyard and they’re not free range. I don’t need LOOP to express my feelings to be honest, and that anger merged into the music rather too easily, but it certainly gave me lyrical ideas.
Did working on the reissues bring a lot of pleasant memories?
Yes, it did. I am not one for listening to any music I’ve made after it’s been completed and released into the big wide world. So certainly there was a lot to take in after not hearing any of it for decades, but none of it was painful. You will always want to do things differently in hindsight, but you need to leave those feelings behind because it was of a time and that’s simply how it was at that moment, good or bad. My best memories are of the earlier days, which were much more fun and innocent, not cynical and a bit more free-wheeling. It became shittier the more it got involved with business to be honest.
Okay, you might be tired of answering these questions, but would you like to share a sentence or two about ‘Heaven’s End’, ‘Fade Out’ and ‘A Gilded Eternity’. What are some memories that first occur when thinking about the songs on those albums?
I think I was at my happiest recording ‘Heaven’s End’.
We loved working at ‘The House In The Woods’, which was upgraded to a 16 track studio from an 8 track when I said to the owners we’d record an album there if it was adapted.
It was still all held together with sellotape and glue, they didn’t even have any outboard effects units, we had to hire those in. The only thing they upgraded was the tape machine and mixing desk. It truly was our spiritual home, just a huge house with a makeshift studio downstairs in the large wooden panelled room, a few mics, Simon the engineer and his dog, Buddy. We thought we were Faust at their farm in Wümme. Luckily, even though we were piss poor, we didn’t end up eating dog food like they did. It was in the middle of nowhere, on the edge of a valley, and one night there was this incredible thunder and lightning storm, the lightning was streaking across the valley.
We had to turn the studio equipment off in case it got hit, so we just sat there smoking joints and looking at this incredible light show that is tattooed on my brain… I’ll never forget that. Simon became a truly loved friend of mine and he passed away suddenly a couple of years ago and I can’t think of ‘Heaven’s End’ or those early Main records without him, so it’s a double edged sword in that I smile at the memories, but I miss my friend terribly. He used to live very close to my mum, so when I’d visit her, I’d go see him and his lovely wife, Karen. The last time I saw him, I’d made my legendary margaritas, so when I left he was hammered and happy. All the other records were made in “proper” studios with no natural light and certainly not any visual stimuli, so it was never the same or as thrilling.
It must feel amazing that a lot of today’s bands are influenced by your sound?
People tell me that, but to be absolutely honest, I don’t think about it. If that is our only legacy, so be it. But I’d rather have more royalties from more sales of our records rather than hearing about theirs.
How come that you decided to drop the idea of an EP series in favour of an album?
Circumstance. I’d do Eps all the time by choice, more immediate and challenging. Sadly, the industry doesn’t allow the timing for that anymore. But the ‘ARRAY’ series was dropped because the label (ATP) had gone under, so we didn’t have the finances to do it ourselves. I’d like to finish it one day, but like I said, the industry doesn’t work well in that way anymore, they want too much time for lead ins or whatever the fuck its called. Gone are the days of a quick 6 week turnaround. Ironic considering that all the technology that is now at everyone’s fingertips, everything takes 100 time longer.
To what degree did you work with GRM transcribed onto ‘Sonancy’?
It didn’t really. My solo work is often a lot more complex and intricate, especially my work at the GRM. I’ve always thought of sound in a certain layered term, so it’s always been there as to my approach, but LOOP is a different kettle of fish to be honest in the sense of structures and dynamics.
Okay, you can’t talk about LOOP without mentioning bands like Neu!, Can, Hawkwind, Spaceman 3. Do you still recall some moments when you first heard those records?
No, not really. I listened to music every waking moment when I was younger, so it’s all a blur. Funnily enough, mates of mine really loved Hawkwind, and much like Black Sabbath, I can understand their appeal and place in the great scheme of things, but I didn’t take to them.
Would you like to talk about the effects and pedals that you’re using these days?
I’m not a gearhead really. Too much of it is toys for the boys. I have some custom stuff made for me by the Lord of Fuzz, Mr David Main of D*A*M, which are works of art by themselves. But I’m not one for getting into the nitty gritty of it all. If it makes a sound that I like, or does something that appeals to my ears, I’ll abuse it.
Can you share some further words on how ‘Sonancy’ was recorded?
Apart from being constantly interrupted by COVID-19, it was all pretty much straight forward. I’d written the tracks at home, which some of those parts were kept in the final version. We had to limit the amount of people in the studio due to regulations and it also being quite small, so for safety’s sake we were not all in there at the same time. We recorded our parts separately because of that, but it surprisingly worked out for the better. It helps you focus a lot more and relax, so that actually helped and in future, we’ll do it again the same. You miss the camaraderie sadly, no going out for a meal or a beer after the day but that’s only diffused in the end, it’s not entirely absent. Everything was pretty much closed, so when I wasn’t in the studio, I spent way too much time staring at my lockdown hotel’s walls, which is definitely something I don’t want to repeat. For a creative process, it’s infuriating. You have to stop and start too much to really get into a flow of sorts. It’s only mildly saving grace is that it does give you time to make changes with some time taken thought, rather than rash decisions. But sometimes, rash decisions help in ways you might not think of.
Your music has a timeless quality to it; and that includes your other projects as well, is that quality important to you?
Definitely. Obviously, I don’t sit there and pat my own back and say to myself “fuck me, this shit is timeless” but no-one can ever accuse me of rushing things out and fuck the quality control. Perhaps, the healthy disdain I have for looking back and always wanting to move forward helps, I really couldn’t say.
It is definitely a conscious decision on my behalf to challenge myself first and foremost, to want to do something different. I would never want to think it’s just OK to knock something out in an afternoon, to phone it in. I work very slowly if I have to, if I need to get somewhere eventually even if it’s a long journey. I’m very happy to scrap something, to trash it without a second thought if I feel it’s treading water or more simply put, it’s a pile of shit. All I can hope for is that the listener can hear that effort, the thought that’s gone into it. Some have said they miss the longer songs or the guitar solos on ‘Sonancy’, but they are absent for a reason, it’s not because I forgot to put them there. They didn’t belong on these tracks or this album. It’s an absolutely necessary decision on my behalf because they were not part of what I have to say right now. It needed to be stripped back and very concise, it is the way it is because it had to be, that is it’s language.
“We’re a part time gang, but always full time punks”
What I love about LOOP is that no matter how you want to describe your music, you always have difficulty pinpointing it correctly. LOOP is LOOP and I’m sure this record will prove that?
I worried about that for longer than I should have to be honest. Many people told me to not worry about that, considering I am the founding member. But I did, because that’s just how my brain works. Now, I have finally relaxed and I don’t let it worry me. It’s a creative outlet that does a very specific thing, one that I ignored for a very long time. It may be back and has different components but it certainly isn’t for the money that’s for sure. It shouldn’t matter who is not involved now. In the great scheme of things they were part of LOOP and that’s when it counts, if it has the LOOP moniker, then it’s LOOP and that’s the most important thing, regardless of time. It was fluid at the start, had some stability, stopped, then restarted and went a bit fluid again but now it’s stable… again. I accept that now without feeling weird about it, the short lived reform helped me get over the feelings I harboured because actually, it’s that people move on when they have to, and so must I. I don’t ever want to be seen as revisionist. Yes, we play the old songs, because people want to hear them… but it was always a thought to make new material too, regardless of how it stands up to the “classic” material or its line-up at that time. It’s LOOP if I say it’s LOOP. So the line-up is Wayne and Hugo, the rhythm section of THE HEADS in their other jobs. Dan sort of appeared out nowhere, I think he might have been lost and just wandered in, he likes to explore. Joking aside, they all fit like a glove and we all like making a racket, so that’s how it works. Sadly, we don’t see that much of each other when we’re not making the racket, because we are spread around the country more than a bus ride away from each other. It’s always said that bands should be a gang, and I always want that feeling… we’re just a gang that is older and wiser to know that being in a gang isn’t all that there is 24/7. All you hear about the bands that were considered gangs and kept going now often travel separately and have a liking for wearing trainers because they are comfortable. Ramones were a gang, they wore plimsolls… but then you find out that they all hated each other and some had questionable political beliefs, so maybe that gang business is all bollocks. I don’t ever want to travel separately, wear appendages on my feet that resemble a washing up sponge or have a liking for right wing conservative fascism in any guise. We’re a part time gang, but always full time punks.
Let’s end this interview with some of your favorite albums. Have you found something new lately you would like to recommend to our readers?
Oh… if you want anything recent, you’re out of luck my friend. I don’t have the room, finances or whataboutery for much at all these days. The occasional thing I buy is often a re-issue or one of these long lost albums that are often found to be that there was a reason why they were lost. My top three albums of all time are ‘Exile On Main St.’, ‘Forever Changes’ and ‘Buffalo Springfield Again’ – strangely all records that were supposedly difficult to make and were fraught with internal frictions, considered shit at the time of release but now are considered masterpieces. They jostle for ranking every time I think about them, but they are steadfast in their ability to never have enough competition to drop out of the top three. After that, I’ll only tell you something that I’ll want to change again because I’d forgotten someone.
Thank you. Last word is yours.
Stand up and fight! Be counted! Because we are heading to an absolute world of pain very fucking fast and THEY want us to not care about that. We need to remember that we should care and we need to remove these fuckers from our lives… THEY need to be gone for good! Apathy is our greatest enemy in these times. Enough is enough. Many thanks!
Klemen Breznikar
Headline photo: Simon Holliday
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