Robert Hampson
English rock and experimental musician
Joshua Robert Hampson (born 10 June 1965) is an English musician and composer. He is the lead musician in the bands Loop, which he co-founded in London in 1985 with his then-girlfriend Becky "Bex" Stewart, and the experimental project Main which he founded with Scott Dawson.
Music career
After Loop disbanded, Hampson formed the more experimental Main with fellow Loop member Scott Dowson, releasing several albums and EPs on Beggars Banquet Records. Although a strong signature in the early material of Main, the guitar was slowly eroded from the stable sounds Hampson and Dowson produced, together with field recordings and other electro-acoustic sounds. When Dowson left the line-up in 1996, Main became a solo project for Hampson, who then abandoned the guitar altogether, feeling he had taken the instrument to such extremes that there was no longer any scope to create with it.
Between 1999 and 2003, he formed the electroacoustic duo Comae with Janek Schaefer touring in Europe, US, Japan, and released their self titled album on Rhiz Records.
He deactivated Main as a project in 2006, in an attempt to free himself of the restraints of critical and fan-based reviews, that still mentioned the guitar as the focal point of the material, even though he had not used it in many years. He was quoted in interviews as saying the guitar was a chain around his neck, and he was unhappy to be still so strongly associated with it.
Preferring to now explore other avenues of sound and its diffusion, especially multichannel systems for live performances, Hampson was invited by the Groupe de Recherches Musicales (GRM) in Paris to compose and perform on many occasions. He has also been associated with like-minded organisations and institutes around the world, exploring intricacies in sound composition.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7345222. VIAF identifies the subject as 3528147907506679210004. The Library of Congress control number is n2016056890. 1 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1965, 1985, 1996 and 1999.
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This entry incorporates text from “Robert Hampson” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.