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Jeremy and his Loops Bring Some South African Vibes to Nottingham

On Monday evening singer-songwriter Jeremy Loops (born as Jeremy Hewitt) and his band played Rescue Rooms as part of their huge world tour;  their Debut Album Trading Change has been released in Europe this year. The band’s musical style is quite unique. You can describe it as modern folk music, but it also contains elements of various genres like Hip-Hop, African music and Electronica.  Jeremy’s artist name derives from Electronica, a genre which uses loop-pedals as an essential tool to record sound loops and put them together in different layers.

The concert started with Jeremy Loops’ support band Croox, a four-headed group from Brighton. All dressed in black shirts and hoodies, they entered the stage and began their set with a song called Oceans. The Band has a predominantly electronic sound, often creating and developing spherical soundscapes within their songs. More songs from their EP Tide followed, like Say something and the more slowly and emotional Crying. Their final song Fake&Fortune left the crowd wanna hear more of this uprising, young Band in the near future.

But the time has come for Jeremy Loops to officially begin his show. He turned up on stage on his own, carrying just a harmonica with him. Jeremy’s first action was welcoming fans of the first row with handshakes – the few lucky ones!  Then he played first tunes on the harmonica, looped them with his technical machinery and sang an improvised ‘Welcome to you all’ song. For the first real song  Sinner other band members joined him on stage, like Jamie Faull responsible for sax and keys, bassist  Sean O’Tim and a temporary joining drummer from Quebec. After Sinner followed Mission to the sun, a song that makes you want to whip your feet and dance. This song sets in extraordinarily with the loop-recording of tunes of a colourful instrument originally intended for kids, whilst Jeremy’s colleague Jamie played the sax to it.

They spent time debuting songs that haven’t yet made it to the album and are totally new to fans, which is always an exciting act. The City, as he told the audience, is a song about the longing to go home to the countryside, whilst touring the biggest cities of the world for many weeks. Jeremy Loops continued with Skinny Blues, creating an even more cheerful atmosphere in the venue. Finally, for My shoes the last member of the band entered the stage – Motheo Moleko, who is responsible for the rap sections within the songs. His performance and the booming African rhythms made the whole crowd get jumping. The first chords of Down South resounded and cheers of engaged fans increased. During the song, the chorus of Bob Marley’s Three little birds came up and fit well into the catchy melody of Down South. Next was Running away and another new song called Only the Good Die Young, highlighted by a looped sax solo of Jamie and Jeremy changing his voice to that of a woman via electronic tools.

Under huge applause and cheers the band left the stage, but shouts of encores made themreturn moments later to play High stakes, a song dedicated to all the broken-hearted in the audience. All good things have to come to an end and so Jeremy Loops played his really final song See I wrote it for you. I didn’t expect it to get any better, but this song made the fans go crazy once again, especially because Jeremy looped his fans singing the words of the song.

For me, this concert was an amazing and unique experience and whenever Jeremy Loops plays a gig again I will be there for sure! It was wonderful to see how much these musicians on stage live and love what they are doing; they had fun while playing all their songs and engaged with the crowd in front of them in different ways. Interest in Jeremy Loops has now awakened, and there is a big chance that the band returns to the UK soon to play more shows after recording their second album. People from Nottingham can especially look forward to a future concert, because Jeremy Loops’ dream is to play Rock City. So keep an eye on Jeremy Loops, now one of my favourite artists, and grab all your friends next time to help this great band making their wish come true!

 





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