This first loopool tape must have spun a good 30 minutes before it occurred to me that I was listening to no more than a 15 second tape loop. First, I haven’t encountered a cassette assembled in such a way to do this before, so that sort of threw me for a, well, loop. Secondly, good loop-based music has this sort of way of dissolving time or, at least, messing with your sense of it, prompting all sorts of questions. In the case of "∞", is that chiming sound the beginning or the end? Why do those panned gurgling textures shift in-and-out of focus with each passing listen? With "∞ II", did I just start in the middle? Why are those muted horns coming at me now and not at the end? Where is the end? Why do my dog’s ears keep popping up at this section? How long should I listen to this? Why am I listening to this? Jean-Paul Garnier, the Los Angeles-based sound artist behind loopool, writes on his website that, “Among the many goals of loopool are: the expansion of the musical pallet, the usage of music outside the realms of entertainment, and creation of music that is a psychedelic, not psychedelic music, but music that acts up the brain to alter consciousnesses.” After listening to both of these tapes, multiple times in fact, I’d say he has achieved these goals on all three counts. What could possibly come off as some overly conceptualized gimmick is, by contrast, a rather mind-bending listening experience. As a wise, yet misguided, space traveler once proclaimed: "To infinity and beyond!!"
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