LOOPER


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BIOGRAPHY

There are lots of pop songs about love but few of them are as unusual as Looper's 'Impossible Things #2'. A boy and a girl get to know each other, then meet. After seven years they have an anniversary, then a honeymoon, and then they get married. But the song's narrative is not, strictly speaking, impossible: It actually happened when Stuart David met his wife Karn. Looper is the child of this not-quite-impossible union.

The band originated in late 1997 with a multimedia extravaganza at Glasgow Art School. Karn showed her super-8 loops and kinetic sculptures whilst Stuart's brother, Ronnie Black, projected some slides. From an enormous box on stage Stuart ran through a repertoire of skewed electronic pop. It all went off without a hitch and Looper was born.

'Impossible Things #2' was just one of the delights of Looper's 1999 debut album 'Up A Tree'. The record's playful mix of lo-fi beatbox sounds and imaginative stories led to a tour of the US with Ronnie playing guitar and a fourth member, Scott Twynholm, playing keyboards and mixing the drum loops. The band would often end shows with a song called 'Who's Afraid of Y2K?', a preview of sorts for their second album, 'The Geometrid'.

Dealing with technology and its effect on daily life, Looper's latest songs are more carefully crafted, the arrangements more complex than before. In addition, Karn has taken on more vocal duties, adding a counterpoint to Stuart's singing style. Looper has moved from its treehouse into a cyberspacestation, the Geometrid.

This smooth, white, Kubrickian vehicle is "the sort of thing we'd imagined would exist in the year 2000, but doesn't," Stuart explains. Straight out of a 1960s streamlined dream, the Geometrid can only be found on the cover of Looper's CD.

"A Geometrid is really a moth," Stuart continues. "Part of the Looper family of moths. Loopers are moths too. It's all quite confusing isn't it?"

Confusing it may be, until you let your ears do the thinking. The opening song, 'Mondo '77', includes the urgent cries of ex-BMX Bandit, current Cheeky Monkey, Francis Macdonald, amid a dirty Casio riff and an unexpected blast of ska-styled horns. 'Uncle Ray' contains a conversation overheard during an afternoon at a California seafood buffet. 'Bug Rain' details a sleep-deprived journey across the States when Stuart was quite happy not burning flies but letting them hit the windshield. 'These Things', based on a guitar tune by Ronnie, is another wistful classic in what appears to be Looper's burgeoning songs about 'things' series.

Then we're back to the future with 'Modem Song'. Only Looper could transform the squiggly static noise of a computer hooking up to the internet into a tale about a Japanese myth. Ronnie's piano tinkling led to the swerving beats of 'My Robot' which asks the musical question, "What would happen if you programmed your computer to write songs for you?" (The answer strikes a blow against human obsolescence.) The album's thematic cornerstone is 'Tomorrow's World' which compares the reality of the year 2000 ("No one has travelled to Mars/I've not seen a time machine yet") with what people in the past predicted about it ("Everyone would live in things called biospheres/Everything would be virtual reality").

It's a wry example of Looper's best talent: taking ordinary, even mundane details and turning them into something glorious to hear. With 'The Geometrid' Looper continue to explore the strange new worlds of everyday life. It's a magical mystery tour that you won't want to miss.