A GILDED ETERNITY

It is no secret that the kraut and psychedelic rock of the early 70's had a huge influence on the UK post-rock scene of the following decade. A good example is the late 80's psychedelic noise rock of Jesus & Mary Chain and the bands that followed in their wake. Together with Spaceman2, Loop was the most interesting of those bands. They took the sound of J&MC, minimized the pop and image focus of that band and instead expanded the music with strong hypnotizing grooves and wild wahwah jams. A Gilded Eternity was their last album and together with the preceding Fade Out, it's the one to get.

If you prefer symphonic and compositional splendour, this album won't be for you. The music we're looking at here is one (or two) chord songs that sacrificed melody for groove and composition for jamming. But if that doesn't scare you then you might need to check out this album as this band managed to get their grooves going like no other. They have a very solid rhythm section at the core; the repetitive drums and bass are very prominent and keep pounding at an entrancing mid-tempo pace; layers of guitars, wahwah, reverb, fuzz, feedback and other effects cast a hazy blanket over them. The whispered shoegazer vocals complete the dazed and out worldly vibe.

Fans of Guru Guru, Amplifier, early Hawkwind and other rocking space-psych-kraut hybrids might find a lot to relish here. The band used to be quite popular 20 years ago but has been kind of forgotten in the huge vault of rock history. But fear not, they sound ageless, fresh and groovy as they ever did. I much enjoyed revisiting their catalogue for reviewing them and would recommend this album as their major achievement. 4 psych-rock stars