Loop Guru

Amarita… All These and the Japanese Soup Warriors (World Domination)
by Lex Marburger

Groovy foldout packaging aside, this is one of the more wonderful albums to come along in years. While retaining dance floor sensibilities, Loop Guru reach into their bag of tricks and come out with… the Middle East, North Africa, India. Amid the heavy, rhythmic grooves and twisting beats are samples of sitars, flutes, Balinese gamelan, and ancient chants. When I listen to Amarita… All These And The Japanese Soup Warriors, I almost always fall into a trance-like state, dub basslines over sweeping drum colors painting my mind with great swaths of color. Amarita… is an enormous album in terms of musical depth and scope. A perfect mix blends the low end, booming, thudding, whoosh-ing, with the high, twittering, soaring, sighing. The rhythms themselves, not relegated to the metronomic “boom, boom, boom” of the usual dance fodder, break, shift, and play with the space in between the pulses. They skitter across the music, forcing you to dance, not just enticing. I would go so far as to say that if you don’t feel like moving some part of your anatomy when you hear Loop Guru, you probably wouldn’t react if I stuck your hand into a pot of boiling lead. I know that with most club music, you really can’t listen to it at home, it has to be really loud, and then it enhances whatever you’ve got in your system, the pulse of the drum giving you a reason to move around. But Loop Guru gives the options of jumping around or quietly contemplating the music. Each song contains complexities that are easily missed in the first few listens. They’re a drug in themselves, nothing additional needed. Perhaps they’ll come around Boston; if so, be prepared to lose yourself in their oceanic music. Take off your shoes, walk in the sand, or strip buck naked and frolic in the waves. Don’t worry, there’s no undertow.