Land of the Loops, Bundle of Joy
Featured Album
Finding the intersection between awkward and funky
Up’s roster was mostly artists from the Pacific Northwest, but not entirely: Alan Sutherland’s one-man sample-and-loop project first recorded in Seattle, but by the time Up released its records, Land of the Loops was (and still is) based on the East Coast, and this album’s only direct connection to the I-5 corridor is vocals on a few tracks by Beat Happening’s Heather Lewis. There were a lot of cut-and-paste acts operating in the mid ’90s, but most of the ones who were willing to create recordings with a not-perfectly-squared-off, DIY vibe were more interested in laughs than in beats. Sutherland can be funny when he feels like it (“Multi-Family Garage Sale,” which appeared in a beer commercial, has some nutty vintage movie samples), but his prime gift is figuring out how to get to the intersection of “awkward” and “funky.”
