Remnants of a Deeper Purity
For their sixth full-length, Black Tape for a Blue Girl offer up their most atmospheric and orchestral work to date. Picking up where 1993'sThis Lush Garden Withinleft off, composer and keyboardist Sam Rosenthal and company execute a dark, moody, and emotion-drenched series of ambient soundscapes brought to life by Oscar Herrera's powerful vocals and the stirring string duo of Vicki Richards (violin) and Mera Roberts (cello). Typical of Black Tape's albums,Remnants' lyrics deal mostly with passionate--indeed, often overwrought--manifestoes about love and honesty, but what lingers in the memory is the stark beauty of the music, nowhere more evident than on the disc's 26-minute opus, "For You Will Burn Your Wings upon the Sun." A textural marvel, it rises on the wings of Richards's haunting violin and swoops down to perch on Rosenthal's gloomy, muted ambiance before taking flight again amid an epic symphony of neoclassical bombast. Worth it for this track alone.--Steve Landau