Browse by Artist: TAPE

Artist:	TAPE
Title:	Rideau
Label:	HAPNA (SWEDEN)
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	HAPNA 025CD

This is the eagerly-awaited third album from the Stockholm-based trio of Tape, comprised of Andreas and Johan Berthling and Tomas Hallonsten. Gently exploring the soft realms of electro-acoustic sound, their world is located somewhere between experimental music and instrumental pop, and with this release, a new chapter has been written in the history of Tape. This album gives us a clearer structure, a sharper sound and the songs take more time to evolve. With Rideau, Tape shows that they are masters of their craft. Tape has been recognized internationally for their music where electronic sounds blend with acoustic and all sorts of instruments and site-specific recordings create the most fantastic melodies. For the first time they have chosen to work with a producer: Marcus Schmickler from Germany, a musician, producer and composer with a broad range. Solo, he makes noise music and pop in the group Pluramon with Julee Cruise and composes contemporary music for choir. Rideau promises to be a follow-up that will reveal an even more considered, meticulously craft-conscious side of Tape, with loads of experiments and accidents that translate into glorious, trembling sound.

Artist:	TAPE
Title:	Opera Plus
Label:	HAPNA (SWEDEN)
Format:	CD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	HAPNA 040CD

Opera Plus is a reissue of Tape's 2002 full-length debut Opera (HAPNA 009CD), with three new tracks taken from the original 2002 sessions. Tape are Johan Berthling, Andreas Berthling and Tomas Hallonsten: guitars, laptop, pedals, synthesizers, harmonium, melodica, field recordings, percussion, harmonica, zither, piano, flute, bells, glockenspiel, accordion, trumpet, paper, styrofoam, yongmei. As Stephan Mathieu wrote at the time of this release, "Tape's music lives at the intersection of a 21st century chamber music and an imaginary folklore. Slowly passing by vast yellow rape fields and ancient, abandoned factories, the music on my headphones seems to fit almost too perfectly. The sun and nature are certainly core ingredients of Opera and its slowly floating melodies carry the spirit of travel, not on an aircraft, but submerged in a landscape instead." In the meantime, Tape have distilled their sound with their albums such as Milieu, Rideau, as well as collaborations with Tenniscoats more and more into an organic song-like format. While all of them are excellent, Tape's essence can be found in Opera. Listening to Opera again after almost six years, it proves to be a truly great and timeless album. Now in a digipak with new cover art.

Artist:	TAPE
Title:	Milieu Plus
Label:	HAPNA (SWEDEN)
Format:	CD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	HAPNA 041CD

Milieu Plus is a reissue of Tape's 2003 second full-length, Milieu (HAPNA 014CD), with four new tracks taken from the original 2003 sessions. When this album first came out, it sounded like nothing else. Seemingly improvised but still so tenderly composed, it took cues from both the most gentle free jazz and Brian Eno's ideas of ambient music, but at the same time leaning against both Swedish folk music and broken pop balladry. Milieu -- together with its forerunner Opera -- became something of a stepping stone for, if not a new kind of pop, at least a new way of approaching it and a new way of seeing what it could achieve. Tape had very little to do with traditional experimental music, they never fitted into jazz and -- although many tried to -- their beautiful songs could not by any means be labelled electronica. Instead it was the genuine gentleness itself of Tape's music that spoke to their soul mates across the world. Milieu opened a door to a musical heart their contemporaries had been trying to reach for a long time. As Andres Lokko describes of this release, "Tape stir up such forgotten feelings, they restore fading pictures we don't really want to share with anyone else. Or in some cases have forgotten they were ever there in the first place. The aching slowness of these melodies awaken reluctant nostalgia; a forced sentimentality. And they do so without the aid of words, only with the purest music; the electricity in the air that surrounds the captured moment." Now in a digipak with new cover art.

Artist:	TAPE
Title:	Luminarium
Label:	HAPNA (SWEDEN)
Format:	CD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	HAPNA 042CD

This is the eagerly-awaited fourth album from the Stockholm-based trio of Tape, comprised of Andreas and Johan Berthling and Tomas Hallonsten. Taking cues both from pop, experimentalism and minimalism, Tape's sound has become recognized internationally and is clearly unique. Their first album Opera was released on the Häpna imprint (Johan is a co-owner) in 2002. Working intuitively, all by themselves, they created mini-symphonies out of electronic sounds paired with a stunning melodic lyricism. With an array of electronic and acoustic instruments at hand, they recorded at a small stone barn on the island of Öland, east of Sweden. 2003 saw the release of Milieu, recorded at the very same barn. These recordings had a more arranged feeling and a clear pop sensibility in some parts. In 2005, they went to Cologne to have Marcus Schmickler produce and record their third album, Rideau. This was done in his Piethopraxis studio and his involvement left traces; an almost architectonical approach was taken and some of the intimacy that characterized the first two albums were replaced by a harder edge. This new album is a luminarium of sound where past and present merge at the speed of light. A world which lets itself be sensed, not known; the first light of your rosy-fingered youth; birches and concrete, touch and go.

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