“We are torn between nostalgia for the familiar and an urge for the foreign and strange. As often as not, we are homesick most for the places we have never known.”
-Carson McCullers
The new Tape Recorders album is a travelogue of places I’ve never been to: Saint John Coltrane African Orthodox Church in San Francisco, the Shinkansen in Japan, Salta in the north of Argentina, and What Lies Beyond. The only place in the record I’ve actually been to (Soundscape Park in Miami) is transposed to the context of an authoritarian quarantine. All the other places are recreated by the imagination, based on field recordings and texts provided by dear collaborators. The testimony is the poem and the sound.
El nuevo disco de Tape Recorders es un diario de viaje por lugares a los que nunca fui: la iglesia de John Coltrane en San Francisco, el Shinkansen en Japón, la ciudad de Salta, y lo que haya Más Allá. El único lugar en el disco en el que sí estuve (Soundscape Park en Miami) es transpuesto al contexto de una cuarentena autoritaria. Todos los otros lugares fueron reconstruidos por la imaginación, a través de grabaciones de campo y textos provistos por queridos colaboradores. El testimonio es el poema y el sonido.
“If you desire to see a Japanese effect, you will not behave like a tourist and go to Tokyo. On the contrary, you will stay at home and steep yourself in the work of certain Japanese artists, and then, when you have absorbed the spirit of their style, and caught their imaginative manner of vision, you will go some afternoon and sit in the park (…) and if you cannot see a Japanese effect there, you will not see it anywhere.”
-Oscar Wilde
credits
released June 5, 2020
The Tape Recorders:
Gabriel Rojo – concept, sound design and editing, Microkorg, harmonicas, sikus, field recordings
Mel Helmick – field recordings, artwork
With:
Lucas Duranda – bass guitar on “The Holy Ground of Sorrow”
Alan William Helmick – bagpipes on “I am not Opposed to the Meaning of Life”
All tracks G. Rojo / M. Helmick
Track 5 G. Rojo / L. Duranda
Track 6 G. Rojo / A.W. Helmick / M. Helmick
Track 6 features the ghost of E.E. Cummings
All rights reserved by Gabriel Rojo on behalf of The Tape Recorders
In Loving Memory of Lucas Duranda (9 dec 1997 – 10 april 2020)
supported by 5 fans who also own “The Book of Ours”
While I enjoy drifts and drones like any other ambient fan, what I like the most is experimental stuff like this, offering sounds you have never really heard before. Very cinematic as well. RICHARD ALMASI
supported by 5 fans who also own “The Book of Ours”
Take the shimmering guitars of the Cocteau Twins, dilate and lengthen with the wistfulness of Boards of Canada and release them like one of Robert Rich’s haunting soundscapes with a jazz coda and you have Carlo Giustini's 'Custodi'. It's brilliant. sepulchre19
Ambient artist charaxes creates the soundscape of an alien forest, with gentle melodies fading into environmental textures. Bandcamp New & Notable Jan 10, 2023