Blood Looms and Blooms

Leila

Warp

2008-06-09

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• (Reviewer)

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• (Member — 0 votes)

From releasing records on Aphex Twin’s Rephlex label, to djing with Bjork, to working with Terry Hall, Leila Arab probably hasn’t had to look far for inspiration for her music. Blood Looms and Blooms is her third LP, this time on Warp Records, following Like Weather and Courtesy of Choice and comes well stocked with collaborators and fluid, shape-shifting electronica.

It’s too soon to start talking about a reappearance of the ‘Bristol sound’ or it’s more notorious moniker, trip-hop, but that time and place’s three (only?) key groups have recently reemerged with credit from different levels of stasis: Tricky and Portishead’s respective creative and time lapses have been shattered by this year’s Knowle West Boy and Third whereas Massive Attack successfully curated the latest Meltdown Festival. It might seem something of a stretch as a segue but Blood Looms and Blooms borrows judiciously from these three and is a similar solid amalgam of influences and new ideas.

A beguiling mixture.

The damaged blues of “Daisies, Cats and Spacemen” recalls the noir soundtracks created by Portishead, particularly in the sweeping vocal by Leila’s sister Roya. Blunted hip-hop and a guest spot from Martina Topley Bird on “Deflect” could place it as a cut from Tricky’s 1995 masterpiece of stoned paranoia, Maxinquaye. And Massive Attack’s sense of creeping dread is also present in spades, particulary on “Mettle” and “Tease Me”. 

That is not to say that this is purely 90s revisionism, however. Blood Looms and Blooms is flecked throughout with Warp-friendly electronic-weirdness, from the phased polyrhythms and zombie-flick synths of “Carplos”, the Boards of Canada-isms of opener “Molie” or the cover of “Norwegian Wood”, unrecognisable save for Luca Santucci’s half-speed vocal, that sounds a little like a harsher Grizzly Bear. Whilst it displays it’s influences the LP retains a distinctiveness which is by turns playful (on the cute-as-a-baby-otter toasting by Leila’s friend’s kids on “Little Acorns”, or the sampled water on “Mettle”), awkward and skillful (as on the symphonic grandeur of “Young Ones”). It’s a beguiling mixture.