Loka - Fire Shepherds
(LP/CD) Ninja Tune ZEN89/ZENCD89, 2006-03-24

LP Tracklisting:
01. Safe Self Tester
02. Meet Dad
03. Airfling
04. Freda Mae
05. Beginningless
06. Tabernacle part 1
07. Tabernacle part 2

CD Tracklisting:
01. Safe Self Tester
02. Meet Dad
03. Airfling
04. Freda Mae
05. Beginningless
06. Tabernacle part 1
07. Tabernacle part 2
08. Safe Self Tester (Quicktime video, dir: Sebastian James)
09. Beginningless (Quicktime video, dir: Glenn Marshall)

Links :
myspace.com/lokafireshepherds
ninjatune.net/ninja/artist.php?id=103

Press release :
"The best things come to those who wait."

Usually, we here at Ninja are all for instant gratification and homespun homilies can go figure. But in the case of Loka the old saying might actually be true. The Liverpudlian duo made their debut on Ninja's "Xen Cuts" compilation all the way back in 2000 and ever since then there has been a little buzz, a sense that something special might come of it. A first single followed in 2004. Now, in 2005, it's time for their debut full length. And we think you'll agree, it was worth twiddling your thumbs for.

It seems that Karl Webb and Mark Kyriacou haven't been wasting their time at their Merseyside studio, they have instead been busy creating a music which at times sounds like Miles Davis jamming with Carl Craig and the Kronos Quartet. Only a lot more fun than that, too.

"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.