Opal Tapes
Founded and run by Stephen Bishop, who also produces as Basic House. Based in Teesside (UK).
Lazzaro
Spellbinding electro-acoustic constructions born from stringed instruments, percussive onslaughts and emotionally charged song craft. Maselli's uncanny skill to create non-conformist drama recalls the wind swept post-rock oblivion of Set Fire to Flames at their most layered and dense, The Haxan Cloaks doom-ridden worlds of grain and texture and the edge blurring of instrument and electronics so expertly honed by Emptyset. “There’s no solitude in art, since it truly only exists in the light of th…
Bem Inventory
Patricia plumbs murky, nervy strains of ambient house and dub techno, accompanied on one track by Mood Hut's Cloudface, for his return to Opal Tapes' fuzzy bosom. Troddin' a fine line between melancholic despair and darkside resolve, 'Bem Inventory' works thru some heavy issues over 6 submerged grooves in patented Opal Tapes fashion. From the run-in,the stereo-strafing 'Mercury In Retrograde' stalks crepuscular noir between 154 and Legowelt, whilst Cloudface allows a chink of dub light int…
Apophenia
Belgian/Italian duo Andrea Taeggi and Koenraad Ecker isolate a diffuse mixture of techno and concrète noise with 'Apophenia' for Opal Tapes. Building on the decayed structures of last year's 'Contrapasso' album, their latest blends the chaotic virtues of their improvisational approach with a more premeditated logic, manifesting five arcane constructions balancing abstract expression and rugged, grooving purpose. In that sense it works well alongside Opal Tapes' boss Basic House, but Lumisokea's …
Hantasive
This LP from Kaumwald has five tracks of creeping, grating, clanging dark ambient electronica with touches of post-dub, kind of like Forest Swords' sinister ambience crossed with the visceral dark noise drift of Ela Orleans & Skitter's recent 'Le Flechettes' LP. Side A opens with the brief and twitchy 'Fetemes', which grinds and groans and glitches like a long-dormant robot flickering into life before the lengthy 'Lethe', which takes up the bulk of this side, drops softly into a Coil-esque lands…