Product Description
- redefine pure faith
- fin de siécle
- with my sorrows
- for you will burn your wings upon the sun | MP3 excerpt – part 1 | MP3 excerpt – part 4
- wings tattered, fallen
- fitful
- remnants of a deeper purity |
MP3 excerpt - again, to drift (for veronika)
- i have no more answers | MP3 excerpt
The original single-cd edition. Packaged in a Jewel Box with large format 16-page booklet in tuck-box.
Download a pdf of the full lyric booklet
Deeply mesmerizing and melancholy passages, wrapped in the emotions of betrayal and salvation, searching for the deeper fragments of a truer reality — somewhere between sadness and hope. Overlayed intense vocals mix with rich cello and violin arrangements, creating the consummate modern day chamber orchestra whose maestro is our own inner soul.
“The ethereal, romantic sounds of Remnants is their richest work so far: tapestries of melancholic, often neo-classical music manifest themselves amidst waves of Rosenthal’s lush keyboards, haunting strings and the vocals of Oscar & Lucian.” – huh magazine
Read an in-depth fan review at epinions.com
“Remnants of a deeper purity is an album of rebirth — the internal analysis and exploration that paves the way for a major upheaval. a realignment of balances. searching through the fragments of a past. paring experiences down to their essence. revealing the deeper core. the shattered filaments of truth and experience that will yet re-entwine to form a new highwire of ecstatic life. the album is the contemplation of betrayal (by others and of the self), the realization of a subterranean thread linking the past to current desire, the revelation of deep personal fears and insecurities…and the attempt to reintegrate all of this into an individual who can re-experience life and the beauty of existence. the lingering thought is ‘redefine pure faith’ so that we may yet re-emerge, renewed…” – sam rosenthal
This version is out-of-print, and this page is here for historical purposes.
Click to Join, hit send, and I’ll add you to the list. – Sam
Reviews Editor –
From Radiobase
Remnants of a deeper purity: this is how we can translate the title of this album by Black Tape For A Blue Girl, which can be fully defined by one adjective: immense. And this is because we are faced with one of the most “abysmal” moments in the entire history of music, one of those moments in which all the possible earthly implications of our wanderings take on more “original” connotations, and, precisely, of a more essential purity. One has the impression that among the meanders of this sublime artistic gesture (in the Brechtian sense), music returns to its only truth: that by which it becomes totally and absolutely the authentic voice of the dark and chaotic depths that sustain the disturbing happening of existence. Sam Rosenthal’s compositions, in fact, seem to reveal the intensity and eternity of the fire that stirs beneath the apparently placid surface of reality. The song form, then, is dissolved by the apocalyptic whirlwind of a musical format that derives, through successive synthesis, from the perfect interpretation of dark sensibility and the austerity of classical chamber music. On this basic canvas, the solemn voices of “singers” like Oscar Herrera and Lucian Casselman are inserted, wonderfully at ease in these blinding scores of the unknown.
The lowest point – in the sense of “deep” – of this ritual of the absolute and the mysterious occurs in the 26 minutes of “For You Will Burn Your Wings Upon The Sun”, a dramatic descent, in 5 parts, into the labyrinths of the human soul. In a desolate and arcane space the threatening drones of the keyboards spread, while Vicky Richards’ violin begins its dazzling dance on the edge of the precipice. The voices of the two shamans of the absolute concoct a hypnotic magma of emotions, before being sucked into the cosmic void. Mera Roberts’ cello also contributes to increasing the sense of overflowing pathos that can be felt everywhere.
The third part of this ecstatic delirium pushes the lump of sound towards the most unfathomable extremes of the universe, in an ancestral vortex made of inscrutable divine symbols, in whose contemplation “Wings Tattered, Fallen” is collected, an ambient exercise with subtle mystical connotations. The magniloquent enchantment of “Redefine Pure Faith” ends with a tender piano sonata, a prelude to the tragic-tinged sweetness of “Fin De Siécle”. “With My Sorrows” is another great vocal test by Herrera, while “Fitful” proposes cosmic flashes with a “treated” voice (Casselman). The only song that comes close to the traditional song form is the title track, even if in a very particular way. The mournful piano notes of “Again, To Drift (For Veronika)” instead strengthen the not tenuous ties with certain things of the most dreamy new age. At this point, nothing remains but the minimalism of “I Have No More Answers”, in which Casselman reaches one of the highest peaks of her suffering declamation. The long tail made of drones and soft echoes is the open space on the clearing of the world, observed without prejudice and without fear, but with infinite sadness, and without any redemption.
Rosenthal’s “negative” philosophy has found its most intense artistic counterpart in these 77 minutes of indelible emotions, confirming, among other things, the old axiom according to which art is the only cure capable of remedying the disease of existence. The fall in time – of which Cioran spoke – has indeed condemned man to the experience of his own fragility, but, in return, has also given him the possibility of being able to probe his mystery, in view of an attempt to clarify the arcane of life. This attempt, destined to fail precisely because it is conducted from a human and, therefore, “finite” perspective, has its pivotal moment in the moment of creation, whose sole purpose is to let the Truth give itself as an “event”, and therefore, be accessible to man (even if only for a few, infinitesimal moments…). Of all this, Remnants of a deeper purity is a clear, majestic, unforgettable example. -Francesco Nunziata
Reviews Editor –
From The Washington Post
Devotees of more upscale forms of bombast may scoff at goth (or “darkwave”), but there’s little on Black Tape for a Blue Girl’s Remnants of a Deeper Purity that’s more lugubrious than a typical passage from Berlioz or Richard Strauss. Indeed, the 22-minute “For You Will Burn Your Wings Upon the Sun” is very much the symphonic tone poem, all straining strings and morose melody. And, since the group has neither a bassist nor a drummer, there are none of those annoying rhythms to irk the symphonic buff.
Despite the violin, cello and harmonium, this quintet is equally indebted to the moody late-’60s art-folk of Leonard Cohen and Pearls Before Swine. Unfortunately, songwriter Sam Rosenthal has none of Cohen’s literary prowess. His lyrics read like a cross between Victorian doggerel and literary soft porn: “If only I could capture the essence of purity/ Reawaken me, entranced by flesh and lace.” Clearly, it’s just as well that such compositions as “Fin de Siecle” and the title song consist primarily of crypto-classical flourishes and pseudo-churchly vocal arrangements.