Tape Loop Orchestra - Before the Light (2018)

Boomkat Product Review:
Andrew Hargreaves’ cultishly-adored Tape Loop Orchestra invokes a pre-dawn energy with the coruscating choral accretion of Before The Light, a steeply absorbing work which picks up directly from where his Solar Light Emissions LP left off in 2017.

According to Hargreaves, this one “concentrates on the human voice as a transcendental force asking questions of the primordial universe.” In doing so, it resonates strongly with the esoteric magick of Tongues of Light’s Channelled Messages At The End Of History side for Pre-Cert Home Entertainment, but does it in a more abstract, suggestive way.

In an elliptical sequence of keening, windswept exhalations, the work unfolds in two plangent parts broken only by the need to turn the record over, conducting a precarious cosmic traverse from almost Phurpa-esque low end undulations in the first, then glacially scaling up to the higher registers with a choir of celestial angels into more lucent headspace by the end of side A, before precipitating collapse of the firmament in side B that leads to a deluge of dead angels in the apex of the second part, who seem to sing up from earth in a final sweep recalling This Mortal Coil’s Song To The Siren slowed down 1000%.