Looper is the spoken-word, electronica project of Belle and Sebastian's Stuart David and his wife Kairn who released their first album Up A Tree early this month.
Stuart programmes the music and tells the stories whilst Kairn designs the stage show, projecting film and dressing the stage with her sculptures.Like Belle and Sebastian, the naïsimplicity of Looper's music taps into a powerfully evocative musical vein.
However, the project differs significantly from the B&S sound in Stuart David's use of sampled breakbeats. The fusion of hip-hop and drum'n'bass rhythms and their distinctive brand of Scottish folk seems an unlikely combination, but then folk and hip-hop seemed an odd combination before Beck made perfect sense of the pairing.
It works well for Looper, the breakbeats carrying the echoed keyboard and harmonic melodies, whilst also keeping Stuart David's mellow storytelling afloat. The tales recount subjective experiences with the simplicity appropriate to Looper's obsession with childhood. Songs like Burning Flies evoke the child's unthinking cruelty, against a background of perfect melodies.
In performance at the Improv Theatre, the band consists solely of Stuart David sat behind some keyboards and other bits of simple hardware. From these he squeezes old school drum'n'bass breaks whilst retelling his stories. The crowd sits crossed-legged and patient, listening intently to the purposely-quiet music.
Sculptures and second-hand television screens litter the stage. Projected film loops colour it, showing children climbing trees and playing in parks. Looper don't go out of their way to entertain, they simply perform their music to a crowd who quietly listen to this understated yet innovative music. If you don't think that they're boring, you'll probably think that they're brilliant.
