Nathan Womack’s instrumental project Lagu Loops was originally released in the autumn of last year but has been something of a sleeper hit outside of the states with a buzz steadily growing with time. Essentially it’s an instrumental project put together from samples of records, cassettes and field recordings acquired on digging trips to China over a period of some years. Initially intended as a tribute to the esoteric loops that inspired Womack’s interest in making beats it’s also a paean to the sounds of the far East.
As on a beat tape, the twenty-five assembled tracks tend to brevity, the shortest coming in at 14 seconds long, the longest at three minutes fifteen while most are somewhere between nearly a minute to just over two. Source material was gathered from China, Hong Kong and Thailand over a number of years and the sonic journey it takes the listener on evokes an Eastern-themed 70s library music record encompassing funk, exotica, and the sort of thing that nearly half a century after its inception gave rise to the ‘cinematic soul’ genre. Womack himself describes it as, “essentially an Easter egg hunt for locals there or people who happen to notice [and are] curious enough to dig in.” It’s certainly a highly atmospheric experience that will have beat junkies and indeed any fans of retro sounds alike salivating.
(Out now on Wax Thematique)