It’s not been a totally unique path, but there’s arguably been few musicians as remarkable when it comes to moving from rock and roll to the further reaches of experimental music over the years – and then finding ways to come back to the latter on their own terms while still pursuing that extreme vision – than English musician and composer Robert Hampson. If one were to only refer to his most subculturally famous work, his band Loop, originally founded in the mid-eighties, would be the core of the conversation, with an impact that is arguably still playing out forty years later at the time of this writing. But following that band’s breakup and the many paths Hampson has pursued since in considering the full range of possibilities of sound reveals a distinct, rich series of work, either solo or via a series of running and one-off collaborations, in a transnational vein of electronic and electroacoustic composition in particular.
In its initial run, the London-based Loop was regularly compared to Spacemen 3 in some corners, understandable enough given their contemporaneous existence and perceived role in either reviving or extending the possibilities of psychedelic rock, where repetition, walls and layers of feedback and a sense of transcendence were key. But both bands always had their own style, and with Loop, Hampson’s distanced vocals created a tension of strange serenity amid the flow, bringing in wider post-punk inspirations amid the evident Stooges and early Neil Young sonic worship that suggested something dark and simultaneously forbidding and entrancing.
After Loop’s early 1990s breakup and concurrent with Hampson’s brief stint in similarly-minded crushers Godflesh, he began Main, initially a project with Loop’s Scott Dowson before eventually becoming a solo affair. While more familiar sounding guitars and vocals were also part of the earliest work, Main soon became a much more distinct and truly on-the-edge experience, using a fascination with ‘drumless space,’ to quote their motto, to explore beatless rhythms and complex, evolving layers of sonic texturing in both studio and live work across a range of releases. Towards the end of the decade, Hampson began to feel that Main’s name and the perception of the work as based around the guitar rather than the wider possibilities of sound was increasingly restrictive. He began moving away from both that name and approach, pursuing remix work and various collaborations and exploring more sonic avenues under his own name or via identities like Chasm.
Hampson’s key step, however, was a fuller immersion into wider experimental music circles following various UK-based events, with Paris’s noted GRM institute inviting him to perform. This in turn led to both further live events in Europe alongside figures like Bernard Parmegiani, meeting Roland Kayn and a collaborative invitation to work with Henri Pousseur in Belgium among many more, along with an eventual full relocation to France for personal and professional reasons. One of the resultant highlights of this overall creative shift was a series of remarkable albums in the twenty first century on the famed Editions Mego label founded by Peter Rehberg, showcasing both wholly original work and many of his commissions in the field as a result.
Over time, Hampson has reexplored his past incarnations from his new perspective, balancing the work done under his own name with further rotating collaborations under the Main handle to what was initially a full live reunion with the classic Loop lineup in the mid-2010s. As time went on that version of the band became a wholly new one under Hampson’s direction, resulting in a striking new addition to that group’s discography, 2022’s Sonancy. As the decade has since progressed, Hampson’s public facing work has returned to commissions for various groups and performances, remaining one of the more intriguing figures of his generation, still dedicated to his own particular musical goals.