REVIEW: Land of the Loops, Puttering About a Small Land (Up)
- Wilson Neate
Apparently, Land of the Loops mastermind Alan Sutherland grew up consuming snacks and television in equal measure, so it's not surprising that Puttering About a Small Land should sound like the residual memory of childhood sci-fi cartoon animation translated into lo-fi electronica, filled to the brim with countless tasty, bite-sized samples.
Possibly (mis)named after the Philip K. Dick novel, Puttering recalls the Young Marble Giants and a less dense and less fluid Cocteau Twins by way of a stripped down Stereolab. With the help of vocalists Heather Lewis (of Beat Happening), Takako Minekawa (a Cornelius collaborator), Jovita Carpenter (aka Lady Mallard of Volume All Star) and DJ Trouble, Puttering serves up a delicious collage of sonic morsels, complete with intra-song movie dialogue snippets.
This follow up to 1999's Bundle of Joy is a similarly intriguing sonic rattlebag that never strays far from its basic coordinates: largely unchanging, circular rhythmic patterns filled out with bass and beats, and topped with fragile vocals and miscellaneous layered sounds that loop in and out of the overall musical buffet.
While tracks like "Knee Deep in Packasandra" and the bubbling, aquatic "How to Feed a Sea Monkey" take a Cocteau Twins approach with melodic, swirling, ethereal vocals whose words are barely discernible, cuts like "Slumber Party," "Automotive High School" and "Marshmellow Pillows" reduce the vocal component to sampled fragments and inflections that come and go, weaving their way through the textured sound.
The real winners are the sleeker numbers like "Drive Safely (and Hurry Back)" with its dubby driving flavor and slight vocals -- sounding not unlike a low-key St. Etienne -- and "Party Pooper" (which is anything but). Starting out with hovering vocal fragments and a vaguely menacing Aphex Twin feel, it morphs into a mesmerizing, dub-inflected mid-section before looping back to its point of departure.
Puttering is a quirkily hypnotic, addictive aural experience fashioned from a smorgasbord of samples. While Sutherland's approach may not be as seamless and polished as higher-end electronica, neither does it jar nor is it pedestrian -- despite a tendency to "plod" rather than "putter" on occasion. Rather, it retains a deceptively simple, almost minimalist charm.
