Electronic musician Lomond Campbell’s new album, LŪP, was created using a tape looping machine built by the artist himself. He calls this machine, LŪP.
LŪP takes tape loops that are 601mm long. This allows approximately 10 seconds of audio. On its journey the tape passes a large, rotating disc containing magnets inside. The magnets gradually erase the audio information on the tape, whilst the rotating disc simultaneously drives two small follower gears with eccentric cams that generate gate signals. The small difference in size between these follower gears cause the gate signals they generate to slowly drift in and out of synchronization. The LŪP machine was designed to work alongside a modular synth, the idea being that whilst your tape loop is slowly disintegrating, you can patch the drifting gate signals into your synth to trigger patterns that meander in and out of sync.