Looper's History Revisited with Box Set

BY Gregory AdamsPublished Jan 21, 2015

While former Belle and Sebastian bassist Stuart David will eventually issue his memoirs detailing his time in the band, he'll also be looking back at his Looper project with a career-chronicling box set. The five-disc These Things arrives April 14 via Mute.

A press release explains that the collection compiles cuts from all throughout Stuart and Karn David's career, and features material prepped as far back as their formation in 1997 up to present day. This includes their 1998 debut 7-inch "Impossible Things," as well as tracks from 1999's Up a Tree, 2000's Geometrid, 2002's The Snare and brand new studio album Offgrid:Offline. The albums will also be issued April 14 as separate digital downloads.

The box set will split up the music into five volumes curated as per the direction of the music. "Lexiphonics," for instance, presents "spoken narratives accompanied by sample-based or electronic music," while, "Transmitte" supplies songs "combining the 'lo-fi' pop song with arrangements and beats from all fields of electronica." The other volumes are titled "Kinokraft," "Voxtrot" and "Melos."

Of rearranging the sequences of their songbook for the release, Looper said in a statement: "For us this box is a repurposed, recycled and renewed work – an attempt to make something new out of something old."

These Things will also include liner notes from Charlatans singer Tim Burgess, a big fan of the band since their early days. It's explained he first came into contact with the group at a concert in California in 1999, lending a helping hand by rushing a pair of AA batteries to the band when a sampler ran out of juice.

Burgess said in a statement: "I wasn't even exactly sure where the music came from: the past, the present, the future, another life or a parallel universe but it totally chimed with what I loved — a starkness attached to the glitches and bleeps but a real go get 'em soul to go alongside that."


The exact tracklisting has not been revealed for These Things, but you can check out a five song sampler from the set, as well as a trailer for the release, down below.

 

   

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