Based in Argentina and focused on South American artists, Pakapi Records has steadily cultivated a catalogue attuned to texture, process and locality. On Pakapi Loops vol1, the label draws from its roster to frame the loop not as doctrine but as a mutable device. Across eleven compact studies, repetition becomes both anchor and accelerant: at times the central material, at others a scaffold for more intricate design.
Some contributors treat the loop as an end in itself, foregrounding texture until it assumes drone-like density, as in Gustavo Obligado’s “Lo imposible es lo primero en hacerse real” (“The impossible is the first to become real”). The track seems to extend ideas from Zona, his 2024 EP, where traffic—perhaps car horns, distant alarms attempting to seep into our sleep—information networks and swarms of small noises coalesce into a restless urban murmur.
Elsewhere, repetition serves as a first gesture in a more elaborate unfolding. In “Trono”, Samuel Sahlieh fractures the cycle into micronarratives—miniature dramatic arcs that surface and dissolve within the grid—suggesting that the loop can contain plot as much as pattern. At other moments, tape loops slip into hypnotic reiteration, as layers of synth hum and pulse accrue through microscopic shifts, privileging surface and saturation over linear momentum.
Cohesion emerges less through genre than through timbre. Mutant-pop synth tones—bright, slightly corroded, faintly mischievous—thread the compilation together, while flashes of mind-melting tropical psych-rock introduce a humid elasticity. Field recordings drift in and out of focus, merging with melodies and acoustic instruments so that the boundary between document and composition blurs. Technical glitches, meanwhile, resist the easy metaphor of breakdown. Rather than signalling short-circuited meaning, they are intensified through collisions between digital and analogue processes: tape hiss rubbing against clean oscillators, clipped fragments set against sunlit chord progressions.
Tape loops may be a familiar strategy, and Pakapi artists such as Juan José Calarco have previously explored the format—most notably on Margen, which assembled fragments of street recordings, electronic detritus, running taps and jagged, handcrafted rhythms. Here, however, the approach feels newly buoyant. Instead of fetishising decay or retro melancholy, the artists animate repetition with playful ebullience and a distinctly sunny disposition. The compilation also marks a shift from the earlier Urbanismo Primitivo VA releases, which leaned toward lo-fi abrasion and deliberately crude textures. By contrast, Pakapi Loops vol1 feels less like an archival study of process and more like a communal experiment in perpetual motion—one that sets the stage for a second instalment and a forthcoming series of EPs. (Gianmarco Del Re)
a closer listen 