Artist.......: Loka
Album........: Fire Shepherds
Label........: Ninja Tune
Genre........: Lo-Fi
Catnr........: n/a
source.......: CDDA
rip.date.....: Feb-21-2006
str.date.....: 000-00-0000
quality......: VBR/44,1Hz/Joint-Stereo
Url..........: n/a
track title time
01. Safe Self Tester 08:27
02. Meet Dad 05:12
03. Airfling 07:04
04. Freda Mae 10:01
05. Beginningless 03:55
06. Tabernacle Part 1 03:20
07. Tabernacle Part 2 05:19
Runtime 43:18 min
Size 60,2 MB
Release Notes:
Usually, we here at Ninja are all for instant
gratification and homespun homilies can go figure.
But in the case of Loka the old saying might
actually be true. The Liverpudlian duo made their
debut on Ninja's "Xen Cuts" compilation all the way
back in 2000 and ever since then there has been a
little buzz, a sense that something special might
come of it. A first single followed in 2004. Now,
in 2005, it's time for their debut full length. And
we think you'll agree, it was worth twiddling your
thumbs for. It seems that Karl Webb and Mark
Kyriacou haven't been wasting their time at their
Merseyside studio, they have instead been busy
creating a music which at times sounds like Miles
Davis jamming with Carl Craig and the Kronos
Quartet. Only a lot more fun than that, too.
"Fire Shepherds" is an album outside of time,
immune to trend. You could argue that like
Cinematic Orchestra the duo share an interest in
the movie soundtrack as something to set our own
lives to. You'd be on safe ground stating that like
Jaga, Loka are concerned with the point where
rhythms cease to be generic and just become
propulsion. But neither of these references can
fully do justice to Loka's love of cascades of
emotive strings and the jazz/rock experiments of
the late sixties and early seventies. From the
opening, sinister piano chord of "Safe Self
Tester", through the groove of "Meet Dad" on into
the driving, swirling maelstrom of the epic "Freda
Mae" and culminating in the two part, almost
devotional "Tabernacle," Loka reach again and again
for euphoria. Strange, out of place and beautiful,
with the long-awaited "Fire Shepherds" they find
it.