The Loom – “Fire Makes” (audio) (premiere) + New Album

Brooklyn indie rock band the Loom will release the sophomore album, Here in the Deadlights, on April 22nd via Crossbill/Stereocilia. It was a long hard road getting to this point for the band as frontman John Fanning went through an emotional storm in his personal life that had him examining everything, including his music, as he rebuilt his life. While that process was painful and difficult, it afforded Fanning the opportunity of a rebirth, something he channeled into the Loom’s new music. The Loom has always been interested in repetition and grooves, things that are the primary concern of electronic music and it’s interesting how Fanning and the Loom are able to borrow dance music aesthetic elements and make them seem completely organic to indie rock. Here in the Deadlights is the first of two records that the band has ready to release as they have found so much creative inspiration drawing from the drama inherent in every day life.

John Fanning tells PopMatters the back story on the Loom’s new record: “The time that followed touring our debut in 2012 was the most difficult of my life to date. My long-time partner (and then-best friend of 14 years, which I’m grateful to say is still the case) and I went through a painful split and ended up on other sides of the country, and the feelings of being existentially lost that followed were unlike any I’d experienced before. As some kind of very minor silver lining, as the band began making what turned into the two records that we completed over the several years that followed, all the mental and emotional noise I was grappling with dovetailed pretty closely with a lot of the sonic exploration we’d been doing in all of our touring leading up to that point — with dissonance, and groove, and volume, and repetition. So, in a way, while the other new record we made was the one we originally intended to, Here in the Deadlights, to me, is the sound of that extremely difficult period. Ultimately though, despite all the noise, the music is intended to be hopeful, and the lines that stick with me most — even though they’re over frantic guitar and horns and David Lackner’s (Phantom Family Halo) amazing squalling saxophones — are the last ones: ‘as long as we’re looking we’re not lost.'”

TOUR DATES

4/22 – Brooklyn, NY – Union Pool

4/23 – Beacon, NY – The Howland Cultural Center

4/24 – Albany, NY – The Low Beat

4/25 – Boston, MA – Out of the Blue Too Gallery

4/26 – Philadelphia, PA – Kung Fu Necktie

4/27 – Washington, DC – Velvet Lounge

4/28 – Louisville, KY – TBD

4/29 – Indianapolis, IN – The Melody Inn

4/30 – Chicago, IL – Schubas (w/ Cross Record)