Fire Shepherds is the long awaited psyche jazz rock masterpiece from Loka.
“What Radiohead would do if they had the balls." Mixmag
The Liverpudlian duo Karl Webb and Mark Kyriacou made their debut on Ninja’s “Xen Cuts” compilation all the way back in 2000 and ever since then there has been a sense that something special might come of it. A first single
followed in 2004. "Loka successfully navigate the avant-garde, ending up
somewhere between Tortoise and The Cinematic Orchestra" said Jockey Slut.
Now, in 2006, it’s time for their debut full length. And we think you’ll
agree, it was worth twiddling your thumbs for.
Loka have created a music which at times sounds like Miles Davis jamming
with Carl Craig and the Kronos Quartet. Only a lot more fun than that.
“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.
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