Robert Hampson

Best known as the founding member and guitarist of Loop, Robert Hampson's later body of work moved away from shoegaze and into experimental territories. After Loop's third and final album, they disbanded in 1990 and Hampson briefly filled a vacancy in Godflesh — touring and contributing to their 1992 album Pure. After a short stint, he grew tired of life on the road and left to form Main with fellow Loop member Scott Dawson. As Main became continually more inherently electronic and acoustic than the distortion-heavy Loop, the duo evolved into a solo project for Hampson, as he eventually set down the guitar altogether and became infatuated with field recording and abstract sounds. After the departure of Scott Dawson in the summer of 1996, Hampson continued to work on Main alone, alternating between that project and collaborations with Jim O'Rourke for the Indicate album Whelm and the Organum albums Sphyx and Veil of Tears. In 2009, Hampson released the three-song, 50-minute long Vector album under his own name for Touch Records, which immediately proved to be one of the most sprawling, ambient works of his career.