Earth Loop Recall
Location:
United Kingdom
Website:
http://www.earthlooprecall.com/
Label:
Wasp Factory
Profile:
Description:
industrial electronica, warped synths and bucketloads of postpunk guitar and attitude, wrapped around songs that take you captive from start to finish...
Reviews:
Earth Loop Recall
Compulsion (Wasp Factory)
~reviewed by Uncle Nemesis
The Wasp Factory label’s very own sound-sculptors release their much-anticipated debut album - and you know what? It’s a bit of a good ‘un.
Now, when I describe Earth Loop Recall as ‘sound sculptors’, I’m not indulging in typical reviewer-hyperbole (at least, not *this* time). This band doesn’t so much make music, as carve songs out of blocks of raw sound. Compulsion is packed with dense, intense, towering slabs of guitar-fuelled contemporary rock noise. It’s an exhilarating racket, but be warned: there’s no holding back here. Sit and listen to this album in one go, and it’ll leave you drained and breathless afterwards. Earth Loop Recall have a very simple aim: to take the listener on a wide-eyed, white knuckle ride...and someone’s disconnected the brakes.
The name of My Bloody Valentine is often dropped as a handy comparison when Earth Loop Recall are being described, and there’s certainly an element of MBV’s relentless, insistent, overwhelming rush of sound in ELR’s own music. You could, perhaps, also namecheck Sonic Youth, in their early, experimental period, before they recorded ‘Goo’ and went all bubblegum-punk on us. I’ve seen Nine Inch Nails mentioned as another point of comparison, although I’m not entirely convinced by this one. Sure, there’s certainly the odd hint of NIN-ness in the Earth Loop Recall noise (particularly ‘Reconnect’, which adventurous DJs could probably mix quite effectively with ‘Head Like A Hole’) but in truth ELR really don’t touch base with any of the usual goth/industrial influences. They’re coming from a different place: the out-there end of the post-punk scene, when to be ‘alternative’ meant something more than just recycled Beatles riffs and cartoon belligerence. Earth Loop Recall - last of the true alternative bands? Or part of a gathering tide of indie-with-attitude? Probably a bit of both.
The Earth Loop Recall sound is firmly based around The Mighty Electric Guitar. There are layers and layers and layers of guitar here, racked up and up over weirdly effective electronic atmospheres and programmed rhythms which swing along with such verve you’d hardly believe it’s all done by machinery. Check out ‘Peta Lena’ for a confident, broad-brush mash-up of programming and laminated guitars, or ‘Please Stop Hurting Me’, with its effortless command of dynamics. One minute it’s a slight little thing, a wistful ballad of lost love, then suddenly it leaps up and bites you like a dog, and the lyrics get quite venomously sardonic: ‘You don’t mix well with alcohol/You don’t mix well with chemicals...’ I would also recommend to your attention the weirdly groovy ‘Optimism Creeping In’, with that odd little guitar-jangle, like John McGeogh just happened to be strolling past the studio at the crucial moment, and then that big, bad, rev-up of a chorus, with the electronic rhythm, down in the mix, subtly but relentlessly nudging everything along. It’s all so neatly put together - this is certainly a band who know their music inside and out. Right at the end, ‘Remember Me’ trips you up, for it’s a neat little spooky-orchestral instrumental, an unexpected moment of come-down after the roaring and clamouring that preceded it.
This is a tremendously assured debut, and, with ‘nuff respect to the other acts on Wasp Factory’s roster, top quality artists all, possibly the most fully-realised, the most *complete* release the label has ever put out. In short - it’s damn fine stuff.
Now all you need to do is go out and buy it.
The tunestack:
Reconnect
Mesh
Petra Lena
Please Stop Hurting Me
Slowly Going Under
Let Yourself
Wake Up Shaking
Optimism Creeping In
Like Machines
Remember Me
The players:
Mark Waterhouse: Guitars, noises, synths, programming
Ben McLees: Vocals, guitars, bass, synths, programming
Joanna Quail: Backing vocals, synths, programming
Gareth Small: Programming, production
The website: http://www.earthlooprecall.com
Reviewed by Uncle Nemesis: http://www.nemesis.to
02/15/04
"Some industrial music is slave to the technology on which it depends, but some manipulates and perverts the little black boxes to altogether more organic, human and some would say, degenerate ends. Like Nitzer Ebb and Nine Inch Nails sexed up for the post-millenial mire, "Reconnect" gleefully spits acrid bile over electronicas clean lines"
-Terrorizer magazine, January 2004 |
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