Black Tape For A Blue Girl
The Scavenger Bride

"Black Tape for a Blue Girl" is the name of the creation of Sam Rosenthal, mastermind of the American gothic/dark label Projekt Records.

"The Scavenger Bride" saw the light in 2002, confirming the high artistic stature of the American formation, which in my opinion reaches its peak with the absolute masterpiece "Remnants of a Deeper Purity" from 1996.

That Rosenthal is a man of experience, one who understands music and knows well what it means to be behind a console, is evident from the formal perfection and elegance that characterize each of his discographic releases. However, it's the feeling and deep inspiration that systematically accompany this perfection and elegance that strike the most: feelings and inspiration not often found in those who are used to sitting behind a desk promoting bands.

Noble and timeless music, that of BTFABG, expressing universal feelings, tales of troubled love, inextinguishable pains. Representations worthy of Brechtian theater, Schillerian poetry, Kafkian literature (to the figure of Franz Kafka, by the way, this "The Scavenger Bride" is dedicated, a concept of love and pain centered on the sorrows and bitter reflections of an unhappy bride).

As usual, Rosenthal takes on the role of director, confining himself to synths and piano, taking charge of music and lyrics, and taking care of sounds and arrangements, leaving it to his ensemble to give substance to his visions.

Accompanying him are old and new acquaintances like Vicki Richards (violin), Elisabeth Grant (viola), Julia Kent (cello), and Lisa Feuer (flute). And it is precisely in the harmonious blend of electronics (vaguely echoing the kosmische of Klaus Schulze), dark moods, and classical music that lies the essence of BTFABG's offer, an offer that certainly does not look out of place alongside sacred names like Dead Can Dance and Cocteau Twins.

"The Scavenger Bride" consists of 13 gems of gothic and dramatic art that practically retain nothing of Kafka's claustrophobic literature, except for winding through labyrinthine, unpredictable paths, tortuously leading to an absurd conclusion.

If "Remnants of a Deeper Purity" was in its eighty minutes something monumental, "The Scavenger Bride" reshuffles the cards and concentrates the peculiar elements that have always distinguished BTFABG's music into a less capacious, but certainly not less refined and intriguing, treasure chest.

A female voice (Elisabeth Grant herself takes on the vocal parts) and a male voice (several guests called to contribute, like Michael Laird from Unto Ashes, Bret Helm from Audra, Athan Maroulis from Spahn Ranch, Martin Bowes from Attrition, and many others) alternate, accompanied at times by a classical piano, at times by the caressing sound of strings, at times by the desolation of cold synths, ingeniously weaving airy ambient phrasings.

Here and there, percussions or acoustic instruments appear, working to infuse a vague folkloristic scent into the fin de siècle atmospheres that imbue the timeless ballads composing "The Scavenger Bride".

Except for noting the curious choice to include a Sonic Youth track ("Shadow of a Doubt") in such a context, it seems rather pointless to mention one piece over another: intense lieder, often interspersed with brief instrumental interludes, follow one another with grace and continuity, building step by step a complex and perfectly balanced path where ethereal and dreamy moments alternate with more tense passages that reveal dramas previously latent.

Praise to the various singers, who offer generally sober, intimate performances, tinged with fragile and delicate melancholy. The work, therefore, while on one hand loses those universal tragedy tones that characterized the '96 masterpiece, on the other hand, gains in flow and freshness, faithfully bringing forth the moods full of nuances and contradictions that stir within the distressed and gentle soul of the story's protagonist.

Thus a test of maturity, the perfectly successful intent of focusing and playing on light and shadow, of wanting to describe a feeling, a story, a character, leaving aside the temptation to abandon oneself to the distinctly decadent spleen that usually animates such endeavors.

The miracle of "Scavenger Bride" lies in its ability to measure and condense, despite its hermeticism and sobriety, the monumental stature of a masterpiece like "Remnants of a Deeper Purity". A melancholy never over the top, a sadness never shouted, a pain never flaunted: these are the moods that pervade an album capable of keeping the flag high for a formation that continues to churn out excellent, always inspired and divinely packaged works in the darkness.