Artist: Loop Album: A Gilded Eternity

Tracklist:

1. Vapour
2. Afterglow
3. The Nail Will Burn
4. Blood
5. Breathe Into Me
6. From Centre To Wave
7. Be Here Now

While I tend to prefer bands on the poppier end of the shoegaze spectrum, I've still found that one of my favorite bands is the U.K.'s Loop, whose sound is more gloomy and psychedelic than most of its peers. The band relies heavily on pounding repetition in the vein of their more krautrock influences, like Can. This repetition creates a disturbingly hypnotic sound consisting of dense bass and waves of feedback, all while possessing Loop's affinity for writing incredible riffs.

From my understanding, most consider their debut LP, Heaven's End, to be their best, but their last studio LP, A Gilded Eternity, happens to be my favorite. The album opens up with the one-two punch of "Vapour" and "Afterglow," which are two of the best songs the band ever wrote. The former slowly builds its way into aural catharsis, while the latter amazes with its dancing guitar lines that weave in and out of each other. "The Nail Will Burn" possesses a total prog-metal vibe, and while that may sound absolutely terrible to some, I mean it only in how it manages to be both punishing and art school wimpy. Also, you could probably headbang to it in your [dorm] room.

I don't feel like going through every song here because they're all incredible, so I'll let you figure it out on your own. Loop rules. I find only one other contemporary to be in their league and that is the great Spacemen 3, who've apparently accused Loop of stealing all their ideas from them. I don't give much credence to that, but maybe that's just because I enjoy Loop more than Spacemen 3.

http://www.mediafire.com/?rmy2myzn0zl