Dust and Light

Tape - "Dust and Light"

I've been a fan of the Swedish trio Tape since their magnificent collaboration with Tenniscoats, Tan-Tan Therapy.

The gorgeous sleeve art looks like a Hala Strana cover, and that might be an interesting reference point. Tape, though a lot more polished than Steven R. Smith and a lot more interested in the mix of synthetic and acoustic textures, is exploring timbral and dynamic juxtapositions similar to those plumbed by the Jeweled Antler crew. On "Dust and Light" they create blankets of swelling and gurgling synths, sparse percussion, and gentle acoustic guitar on top of which resonate mellow (always an apt word when discussing Tape) vibes and what sounds like subtly bit-crunched reeds. It's music entirely ambivalent to climaxes, steeped in subtlety, and seemingly content to soundtrack ambiguous pre-dawn emotions. And at that it's pretty top-notch.

Revelationes is available now as a limited edition LP from Immune Recordings.