Search - Loop Guru :: Sheikh

Snooze button for trance heaven

John R. Hodgkinson | 02/09/2002

(4 out of 5 stars)

"First, full disclosure - I will buy all things Loop Guru. I love the disorientation, the way you never know where you are: full-tilt beat-less ambient swampworld, or somewhere in a trance heaven scattered throughout with quirky worldmusic samples (loops from gurus indeed). But if you are less enamored, this single will probably not change your mind.

This EP consists of outtakes from the Amrita/Japanese Soup Warriors release. Yayli (Deptford Monkey Chant Mix) is fairly close to the album, but with bass guitar and organ drone more prominent. The New Look Of Landscape Gardening is a sketch for the album track Solus, just mellotron-like flutes with distant congas toward the end, soothing but obviously unfinished without the gorgeous male/female sample duet. I guess "landscape gardening" might be a good way to describe how they built the album track?The standout is "Papasus (The Original Demon)". The mix still doesn't diverge much, tweaks include a drone reminiscent of the old Myst game (surely coincidental) and a more shuddery feel to the autoharp sample - and they kept that incomparable, haunting wordless vocal. Best when you've saturated on the album version but still want to keep listening to the track somehow, to stay in trance heaven a little longer"