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LE LOUP - "Family" - 21st, september 2009
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At the core of every contented family is
a sense of balance, an emotional push-and-pull that helps
stabilize the entire unit. A similar equilibrium anchors Le
Loup’s second album, FAMILY. Recorded in a remote
cabin and a Maryland basement, the record finds the middle
ground between tribal rock, freak folk, and sonic experimentation.
Like most families, Le Loup has grown since
its inception. What began as the bedroom project of Sam
Simkoff is now a full-sized band, with all five members
contributing vocals and songwriting credits. The band’s music
– originally a blend of keyboard loops, banjo, and computer
wizardry – has grown as well, encompassing everything from
shape note harmonies to polyphonic percussion.
Simkoff and band-mate Christian Ervin produced
Family themselves, having previously worked together on the
band’s debut, The Throne of the Third Heaven of the
Nations’ Millennium General Assembly (2007).
Unlike that first album, Family doesn’t rely on synthesizers
or electronic support. Instead, the musicians took a more
elemental approach, capturing the organic sounds of their
instruments before treating them with various effects.
“Christian and I would chop up all of
those organic sounds and re-process them as samples through
a computer,” Simkoff explains. “Then we would either
add heavy effects or just throw them back together in different
ways, which helped us get a very inorganic, synthesized sound
from natural instruments.” Certain melodic themes were
added to multiple songs, linking the album together with their
recurring motifs.
After months of recording sessions in drummer
Robby Sahm’s basement, the band traveled to North Carolina,
where they settled into a cabin and removed themselves from
the distractions of everyday life. There was no internet,
no TV, and little communication with the outside world. Using
that isolation to their advantage, five songs were recorded
in two weeks, effectively finishing the record.
Sophomore albums are tricky things to create,
but Family is a different beast altogether. It’s an expansion
of Le Loup’s sound, an introduction to the completed lineup,
and – above all else – a showcase for Le Loup’s strength as
a live band. The insular tone that Simkoff brought to The
Throne... is gone, having been replaced by a collective mentality
fueled by the band’s touring history.
“One of the best parts about playing live
is the primal experience,” he enthuses. “That feeling you
get when a bunch of people are throwing a lot of energy into
something, just bouncing around onstage. That was something
I hadn’t considered when writing the first songs. Going into
this album, we wanted to transfer some of that live energy
onto the CD. We still used some studio trickery, but most
of the songs have a strong basis in us playing live together.
They’re based on that joy we took from the live show.”
The result is an album of experimental rock
songs and campfire sing-alongs, set amidst swirling textures
and murky production. Le Loup is still a young family, of
course, but Family is nothing short of a musical coming-of-age,
and adulthood never sounded so promising.
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LE LOUP -
"Family" (digipack) - 13 euros (shipping costs
are included)
1. Saddle Mountain - 2. Beach Town
- 3. Grow - 4. Morning Song - 5. Family - 6. Forgive
Me - 7. Go East - 8. Golden Bell - 9. Sherpa - 10. Neahkahnie
- 11. A Celebration
13 euros (shipping
costs are included)
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LE
LOUP - "The Throne Of The Third Heaven Of The Nations'
Millennium General Assembly" - Out, october 08th (FRANCE,
BENELUX, SWTIZERLAND)
During certain periods in life, creativity
goes beyond serving as an outlet for dealing with stress,
beyond being a welcome distraction, and becomes a compulsion.
It is at this moment, when creation starts to bridge the gap
between superfluity and intrinsic necessity, that some of
the best art is realized. For Sam Simkoff, the creative force
behind Le Loup, a similar cathartic tumult resulted
in The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations'
Millennium Assembly.
Created during a time of personal crisis,
The Throne is a cataclysm, an escape, and a journey. Inspired
largely by Dante's Inferno (also a journey conceived by a
man in a time of crisis), here an emotional catacomb is traversed
circle by circle. From Dante come apocalyptic scenes, rendered
from personal feelings of hopelessness and impending disaster.
Descent and escape are the central themes of "canto i" and
"canto xxxvi", which take their titles from the first and
last chapters of the Inferno, respectively.
Simkoff encountered the works of both Dante
and another artist, James Hampton, during the initial writing
of the record. The Throne takes its title from a piece of
folk art that was meticulously built over the course of nearly
fifteen years by Hampton, starting in the '50s. An engulfing
homage to another heavenly realm, Hampton was a harried, outsider
artist who kept his work a secret in a shed adjacent to his
home. Consisting of 177 individual pieces that were painstakingly
assembled from everyday objects, Hampton's throne became a
delicate shrine to the transcendent.
More than a thematic influence, Hampton's
work served as a model for pouring personal turbulence into
work in a frenzied manner. Le Loup also takes the subtitle
of album centerpiece "le loup (fear not)" from the crown jewel
of Hampton's throne, a placard at the top of his work wrought
of tin foil, urging the viewer to "Fear Not". This hopefulness,
in the face of uncertainty and despair, shines through on
the epic album closer "i had a dream i died."
The complex themes of The Throne are characterized
by mounting tension and dramatic swells, coupled with an engaging
emotional resonance that lifts just as much as it illuminates.
Simple melodies plucked on a banjo are buoyed by keyboard
lines, improvised percussion, and sometimes as many as a dozen
overlapping and intertwining vocal tracks, creating a complex
and lush soundscape which shrouds itself only long enough
to surge into hugeness. Conceptually abstruse while remaining
fundamentally personal, The Throne is a collection of rushing
narratives that connect the individual struggle of each of
us to the death of the universe in a manner that is both intimate
and unshakably vital.
Le Loup is: Sam Simkoff – banjo,
keyboards, vox Christian Ervin – computer Mike Ferguson –
guitar, amp, vox Nicole Keenan – keyboards, french horn, vox
Dan Ryan – bass, percussion, vox Robert Sahm – drums, percussion
May Tabol – guitar, vox Jim Thomson – guitar, amp, vox
www.myspace.com/leloupmusic
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LE LOUP - "The
Throne Of The Third Heaven Of The Nations' Millennium
General Assembly"
1. canto i - 2. planes like vultures
- 3. outside of this car, the end of the world! - 4. to
the stars! to the night! - 5. (storm) - 6. we are god!
we are wolf ! - 7. breathing rapture - 8. look to the
west - 9. (howl) - 10. le loup (fear not) - 11. canto
xxxvi - 12. i had a dream i died
Order
this CD
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