The World in Your Eyes

The World in Your Eyes compiles the entirety of Loops 16 Dreams and Spinning 12" singles and adds four extra songs. Their earlier phase tends to concentrate centrally on pounding a giant riff into submission with the least amount of backing necessary, with all the sunshine happiness of the most downered Stooges sub-blues imagined. Generally, The World in Your Eyes captures some of Loops most straight-ahead material, and Robert Hampsons vocals are at their least fiddled with, production-wise. Bexs Spartan drum patterns usually consist of "thwack," "thwack-thwack," or "thwack-thwack-pish"; she might not stand a chance in King Crimson, but she fits the bill perfectly on minimally stomping songs like "16 Dreams" and "Head On." The ten-minute "Burning World" and 13-minute extended version of "Burning Prisma" (how many other bands do extended versions of ten-minute songs?) both have the entrancing qualities of the best Spacemen 3; the lengthier version features some extended soloing that avoids flash and wank. "Brittle Head Girl"s melancholia strikes upon third album Velvet Underground, bizarrely using shades of new wave synth. A brilliantly fevered cover of Suicides "Rocket USA" (from a Peel Session) captures all the rush and frenzy of the original; Hampsons vocals do Alan Vega proud, evoking all the evacuated headspace required: "Gonna crash/Gonna die." A racing rhythm box drives it in the same manner of the original, but the stun guitars add something that the earlier version arguably lacks. ~ Andy Kellman