Loop
A Gilded Eternity

I bought this record back in 1992 at the legendary "Stone Roses Records" on Via Roma in Padua. I remember picking it up because I didn't find anything interesting that day, but I wasn't entirely convinced of the purchase. This is because "A Guilded Eternity," although it employs the stylistic elements that were in vogue at the time—distorted guitars, noise, a hypnotic and psychedelic quality, and a certain melodiousness—actually refrains from providing the listener with the emotional satisfaction of an immediate cathartic effect, unlike other records of the period.

This record does not establish an immediate relationship with the listener; it requires multiple encounters to overcome the inevitable differences and build a lasting connection. In fact, over 25 years, my appreciation for this work has only grown.

It's a timeless record, and perhaps for that reason, eternal—of a golden eternity, exactly. The musical references are to rock classics like the Stooges, particularly those of "Funhouse," Krautrock, especially Neu!, from whom Loop derive a propulsive style that gives the music a sense of journey and the pleasure of repetition with subtle variations, to Chrome with their futuristic experimentations and themes, but also to more mainstream musicians like Keith Richards, who seems recognizable in the syncopated and circular guitar riffs, for example, in "Breathe Into Me."

Loop immediately sets things straight with "Vapour," a hypnotic track where the tight groove of guitar, bass, and drums supports a dreamy singing, but it's a dark and tense dream and, towards the end, when one would expect a resolution of the accumulated tension, instead the tempo doubles, along with the sense of dark unease. The reference to "Negative Land" by Neu! is evident.

In the following "Afterglow," the sun seems indeed to have definitively set, and it feels like we are moving in the bleak landscape of a dystopian future, among smoking ruins and decayed technology.

We then arrive at the tight and propulsive "The Nail Will Burn," among the best tracks on the album, where the music of Loop takes off amid spacetime distortions and sudden seismic jolts.

When we wake up in "Blood," we wake up in another nightmare. It feels like floating in deep space, without reference points.

Through "Breathe Into Me," whose fast and tight progress seems to instill new life and hope, we perhaps arrive at the masterpiece of the album, "From Centre To Wave," characterized by an unheard-of limping but indomitable pace, and "Be Here Now," whose hieratic stillness suggests a precarious calm in a hostile world.

When we wake from the dream, we might not even remember, but a sense of dark unease will stay with us for a long time.


[In the original edition, there were two additional pieces that actually constituted an EP juxtaposed at the end of the record almost to compensate for the limited duration. In the remastered edition, these two tracks were eliminated, and I agree with the choice because "Be Here Now" truly works as a concluding track]