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12"
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BLANK 008EP
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"Bass Clef returns with this first installment in a two-part series. Picking up where 'Cannot Be Straightened' left off, 'One Hundred Point Three' is a cerebral assault on the dance floor. Constructed around a monolithic bassline, this track will shake the fillings from your teeth. Taking a sidestep to the left, '23 Tunnel Chords' tantilizes with meandering melodies reminiscent of mid-'90s IDM, before finally dropping with a free-for-all turbo-rave 2-step. The flip is dedicated to a bastard gabba-punk garage, somehow infused with a poptastic euphoria that has to be listened to to be believed."
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12"
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BLANK 006EP
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"Blank Tapes continues developing its interests in a new kind of sound -- Unreal Word Music -- with the debut release by new signings Spring Tides. Featuring Ghanaian Afla Cey on vocals, lead track 'Burnt Out Moons' reverberates around a juju via danceteria skank. 'Happy Sighs' is an electrical rush of instrumental, Krautrock-esque hooks. On the flip, 'No More Mornings' has been retooled by Hot Chip and, unsurprisingly, sounds like a lost folk song from the future. Closing instrumental 'Fuck The Situationists, Fuck The Wildlife,' despite its title, is a benign reflection, a straight-to-tape head nodder."
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CD
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BLANK 005CD
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"Outstanding debut album from France's Thee, Stranded Horse. Churning Strides is an album that draws you in slowly and then leads you out into a head-space uniquely its own. The work of singer, songwriter and Normandy resident, Yann Tambour, this is a suite of songs that gleams like the moon on water and follows impulses that work like tides, slowly but irresistibly. Playing acoustic guitar and kora -- simultaneously in the case of 'Tainted Days' -- Tambour has a crafted sound that slips and slides from place to place, feeling to feeling. The music of sub-Saharan Africa -- Delta blues -- French chanson -- the lyrical anarchism of Leo Ferre -- the precision and unexpected melodic angles of Joanna Newsom's arpeggios -- the cosmic folk of Marc Bolan's Tyrannosaurus Rex. All of these may come to mind at different points of Churning Strides. None are the key to Thee, Stranded Horse: this is Yann's voice and his lyrics -- written mostly in his fluent English -- their stops, starts and restless shifts from image to sound image. Yann Tambour has previously made music as the founder and orchestrator of Encre, an outfit which made use of samples, guitars (electric and acoustic), as well as other live instruments and his own unmistakable voice. Encre's two albums, Encre (2001) and Flux (2004), were released in France to great acclaim by Clapping Music, but Yann made a clean break in 2006, exploring the kora, moving to the Normandy countryside and dreaming up the acoustic reveries and voices of Thee, Stranded Horse."
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CD
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BLANK 003CD
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"Blank Tapes are proud to release the debut album from Bass Clef, aka Ralph Cumbers. Having spent years refining and distilling his sound, Ralph finally locked himself in his tiny studio in Hackney 8 months ago to emerge with a clutch of demos that contained some of the freshest, most dazzling beats that the Blank Tapes posse had heard in years. Anyone familiar with his earlier release as RLF for labels like Rex or Hombre will notice a distinct progression in his sound. Gone is the clatter and clutter and higher tempos, instead things have been eased to the steady heartbeat of dubstep. But there the similarities with the fashionable new genre end. Utilizing just an old cassette four-track (ask yr parents), a drum machine, a sampler, a vintage synth and valve compressor, Ralph has conceived a striking and original debut. Opting out of the race for the latest sequencer/processor/sound card which drives much IDM, Ralph is somewhat of a connoisseur of vintage analog equipment, polishing his literally broken beats with analog fx held together with blue tac gives his work a wholly unique character, charm and depth. Think the viral dubspaces of Mad Professor, the DIY intimacy of Third Eye Foundation and the brain-teasing beat-programming of AFX, all with live interventions on trombone, theremin and cowbells and you're nearly there. PR by Hermana, so expect the same kind of response as with Scatter, the last Blank Tapes album, if not more."
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