Since their debut album Fire
Shepherds in 2006, co-founder Karl Webb left the band,
leaving Mark Kyriacou to carry the Loka banner. Mark re-grouped with members
of the live Loka band (Tom Sumnall – bass, Ged Hawksworth – drums,
Catherine Norman – keyboards and Ray Dickaty - sax) and went about
sketching out ideas later to become Passing Place.
The result is their most confident and cinematic album yet. Less
claustrophobic and inward than before, the new album has a wide-screen,
rolling hills vista feel to it, perhaps most beautifully realised with
Anglesey’s brass ensemble Seindorf Beaumaris Band on instrumental tracks
such as "The Art Of Burning Bridges", "Exit" and "Sound Stars Make". There is a
lot of top-level musicianship on show on "Passing Place", take the
section "As The Tower Falls" and "The Tower", which share a certain
jazz/rock high-energy propulsion with that of label-mates Jaga Jazzist,
and shows Loka can do varying tempos effectively during the course a
full-length. It is an album seeped in reflection, but containing a
wide-eyed thinking of the days to come.
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