Loka’s Fire Shepherds is about texture, mood, and atmosphere.  Playing alternately like the backing track for dense Jazz-Fusion album and a Seventies action flick, bongo’s, organ, and buzzing double bass never sounded so good. Over at Ninja Tune Loka is billed as creating “a music which at times sounds like Miles Davis jamming with Carl Craig and the Kronos Quartet” and that is an apt description with equal parts of Bitches Brew, More Songs About Food and Revolutionary Art, and Night Prayers providing a swirling mass of psyche-groove.

“Freda Mae” is what Naked City would sound like if they scored porn. Horns and reeds grind and moan like a blue whale getting it on with a box car while the bas line slinks around like the pizza delivery guy with no pants. It is sleazy, slightly greasy, very decadent in a pay by the hour sort of way, but so very good. Not everything here is as wrapped up in sensual skank as the opening track, “Safe Self Tester” is a lush and sonorous number filled with rich orchestra back drop of thick cellos and trilling flutes that blanket a driving bass line.

Loka create what could be best described as Program Music as each song is written to push the listener to conjure images on their own that fit the thematic mood of the moment. “Airfling” is a dreamy piece that rolls and surges on a tightly locked rhythm section with gentle breezes of muted brass floating in from the distance like a far off bird calling out. The focus is less on resolving chords and providing a fully realized theme as it is about evoking the feeling of a certain place and time.

Fire Shepherds is a great album if you are looking for music that does not demand your undivided attention to parse meaning. If you are in the market to let you mind wander and to have a collection of songs that can seep into your surroundings than you can do no better than Loka’s effort. Highly recommended. You can grab it either at eMusic or from Ninja Tune.