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If English is your first language and you could translate my old Italian text, please contact me.
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I Loop Guru sono un gruppo multirazziale della Gran Bretagna capitanato da
Jamuud (Dave Muddyman) e Salman Gita (Sam Dodson).
Si formarono nel 1985
con l'intenzione di reagire al predominio del trio rock (chitarra,
basso, batteria) e del synth-pop. Invece degli strumenti di moda, si armarono
di tape loops (soprattutto per i ritmi), registrazioni di suoni naturali
e di voci umane, e di strumenti esotici. Sovrapponendo i nastri e l'esecuzione
dal vivo, i Loop Guru impostarono una ricerca sulla world-music nel mondo
dell'alta tecnologia.
Rivelati da tre singoli di tutto rilievo, Mrabet/ The Shrine (Nation,
1992), Paradigm Shuffle/ Hope (Nation, 1993) e Sussan-Tics
(Nation, 1994), si sono imposti fra le
novità salienti della scena pan-etnica con l'album
Duniya (Nation, 1994 - Waveform, 1995).
Incrociando world-music, musica ambientale, jazz e techno, ovvero Jon Hassell,
Brian Eno, Weather Report e Moby, i Loop Guru compongono sinfonie per ipnotiche
frasi dub, affollate percussioni esotiche, e loop di suoni campionati.
I gorgheggi astratti della cantante iraniana Sussan Deihim nobilitano
la sarabanda di Bangdad, con un incitamento ritmico degno di Enya,
il balletto incalzante di Sussan 9, con una elaborata armonia di bisbigli
eterei che ricordano ancor piu` da vicino Enya,
il "treno" techno di Under Influence, con una distesa di vocali oniriche
interrotte da fremiti orgasmici e contrappuntate dall'arpa,
e la comica fantasia di Aphrodite's Shoe, una sequenza di variazioni
dello stesso ritornello per flauto, scacciapensieri e xilofono su
una forte pulsazione dub del pianoforte.
Lo spirito del "quarto mondo" di Jon Hassell emerge in
The Fine Line Between Passion And Fear
e nella jazzata Jungle A,
"canzoni" ipnotizzate dai vagiti "equatoriali" dei fiati e dai cicli matematici
delle voci.
Ma il duo ha anche in mente di "vendere" questi suoni alle discoteche, e
la trascinante orgia percussiva di Shrine Of Sringar lascia intravedere
uno sbocco commerciale.
La lunga suite The Third Chamber di oltre venti minuti, ottenuta
sovrapponendo rosari asiatici, suoni della natura e languida musica
elettronica,
e` impostata su un misto di spiritualita` new age e di trance psichedelica.
Tutte le composizioni fanno uso massiccio della tecnologia per allestire
puzzle sonori sempre piu` audaci.
Un arsenale di strumenti etnici aumenta la suggestione degli arrangiamenti.
Con Life Garden e Transglobal Underground, i Loop Guru sono fra i massimi
esponenti della "transglobal dance", al confine fra techno e world-music.
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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.
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Amrita (North South, 1995) riesce ad assimilare in maniera ancor piu` lineare folk slavo, raga e nenie arabe nel contesto di treni techno e sincopi hip-hop.
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If English is your first language and you could translate my old Italian text, please contact me.
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Nel frattempo l'ensemble aveva continuato a sperimentare con i nastri. La
tecnica di "collage generativi" venne consegnata a tre cassette a tiratura
limitata intitolate Catalogue of Desires.
Le prime due cassette verranno ristampate come
The Fountains Of Paradise (Hypnotic, 1999).
Il terzo volume venne pubblicato come
Catalogues Of Desires Vol 3 (North Sound, 1996).
La musica rinuncia sorprendentemente ai
ritmi che li avevano resi celebri, ma non riesce a sostituirli con arrangiamenti
elettronici altrettanto creativi. I toni etnici (in gran parte dovuti a
campionamenti) sono ancora onnipresenti, ma sono diventati puri stereotipi
sonori all'interno di un flusso ambientale di suono organico.
Loop Bites Dog (North South, 1997) e` opera schizofrenica, che tenta
di superare i limiti del precedente in due direzioni, da un lato approfondendo
l'estasi mistica di Don Cherry (White Light)
e Terry Riley (Riley's Ants), dall'altra accentuando il melodismo
del techno-funk di Peter Gabriel (Karma Marga).
Nascosti nel mix sempre piu` intenso e poliedrico, ci sono anche esperimenti
d'alta classe, come la fusione di musica psichedelica e danza gamelan
tentata con Out Here.
E` possibile che il tempo annullera` la portata del loro melting pop musicale,
tutto sommato una volgarizzazione delle idee di Peter Gabriel e di Enya,
ma lascera` intatte le qualita` delle loro canzoni piu` graziose, come
Aphrodite's Shoe e Karma Marga.
The Third Chamber (NorthSouth, 1997) comprende cinque movimenti, fra
cui quello gia` pubblicato su Duniya, e rappresenta il lato piu`
contemplativo della loro arte, al confine fra
musica cosmica, musica ambientale e musica etnica.
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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.
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