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Rating: [The rotating dwarf had let slip this version - the second - of the following review and had published one that contained several errors. Let's fix that by putting that one offline and this one online — clear, right?]
Black Tape for a Blue Girl is a project by Sam Rosenthal, an American composer and keyboardist. The group was born in 1986, with sounds close to English dark and Dead Can Dance. After six full-length albums, in 1996, an album unique for its genre came to light. The music is much closer to chamber classical than rock, with Rosenthal's keyboards providing a constant backdrop for cello and violin scores, and a male voice dueting with a female voice in a vibrant weave.
The album opens with "Redefine pure faith," sweet and martial, "Fin de siècle" is a distant siren song.
The plots intertwine between love and absence, which with the oppressive "With my sorrow" arrives like a bitter chalice.
The album's peak is reached with over 26 minutes of "For you will burn your wings upon the sun," structured in five parts. Heart-wrenching violin parts accompany an emotional and overflowing male voice until silence.. It's an emotional whirlwind; the expressiveness of the singing is perfect, severe, and desperate, a struggle between reason and irrationality.
The central part of the piece consists of distant dissonances, before the keyboards return to an apparent calm, a painful requiem before the restoration of the initial theme without vocals that speaks of regret and loss.
The subsequent "wing tettered, fallen" is a twilight keyboard ballad with female vocals, "Fitful" is the path towards the end of reality. "remnnts of a deeper purity" is an acoustic ballad, the otherworldly peace.
"Again, to drift," an instrumental with piano and keyboard, is a romantic prelude before the final ten minutes of "I have no more answer," made of distant dissonances and warbles of voices.
A monumental album, long and intense.
Tracklist and Videos
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