As a young shoegaze kid flirting with goth at the turn of the century, discovering Projekt Records was an absolute game changer for me. For several years, I worshipped the label and its prolific roster, soaking up each new release by Mira, Audra, Mors Syphilitica, Love Spirals Downwards, Lovesliescrushing, Vidna Obmana, Unto Ashes, and many more. My obsession with the label culminated in a pilgrimage with three online friends to Philadelphia in 2002, where I spent a long summer weekend at the Trocadero in Philadelphia for ProjektFest, the label’s regular showcase. Good times, noodle salad.
For the uninitiated, Projekt began in 1983 as a DIY outlet for ambient/synth artist Sam Rosenthal. A few years later, Rosenthal began collaborating with like-minded musicians under the name Black Tape for a Blue Girl. As the flagship artist on Projekt, Blacktape began to thrive by the mid-1990s, by which point their introspective, Philip Glass-meets-Dead Can Dance sound attracted a devout cult following. Over the course of forty years, Black Tape for a Blue Girl have released thirteen studio records, a handful of EPs, and several compilation-only tracks. Their work continues to innovate and inspire.
In May of this year, Rosenthal released a 40th anniversary expanded reissue of Black Tape for a Blue Girl’s debut LP The Rope across a variety of formats.Released in 1986, The Rope is a strong statement of intent that continues to capture the imagination of listeners around the world. To celebrate the reissue as well as four decades of Black Tape for a Blue Girl and Projekt Records, I had the chance to catch up with Rosenthal to discuss the band’s past, present, and future, the label, and all things in between.
First there was God, then there was man, then there was Black Tape for a Blue Girl… Let’s talk about the genesis of the band. You were recording ambient/minimal electronic music early on under various names and I’m curious to hear how Blacktape evolved from that work.
I was making a fanzine in Florida when I was in community college in the early ‘80s. I was writing about the local bands, punk bands, new romantic bands, and whatever else was happening. I went to Radio Shack and got a Moog keyboard and started making my own somewhat formless electronic music. It was the early ’80s, there was no way people could hear most of these bands I was writing about since a lot of them were bedroom projects and not the punk/rock live show side of things, so I formed Projekt in 1983 as an outlet to release a cassette of bands from southern Florida which also featured some of my ambient work.
Then I met Oscar Herrera through his band, The Sleep of Reason, who were compared to Bauhaus. When I heard his voice, I thought he was a great vocalist with a lot of range. I asked if he wanted to sing on a couple of tracks on my Islands cassette (which was reissued last year on vinyl). I went to California for college in February of ’86. I was alone and didn’t know anybody and I started writing my own lyrics. Looking back now, they were very morose and extremely introspective. For perspective, I was listening to a lot of This Mortal Coil and Dead Can Dance and Marc Almond. Those are the three bands you could mash together and consider an early reference point for Blacktape. There was also the instrumental material, Brian Eno side…
I went back to Florida during summer break and asked Oscar to sing on six tracks that would feature on the first Black Tape for a Blue Girl album, The Rope.
It seems like your solo work bled right into The Rope, it seemed like a natural progression in my opinion. With that in mind, I’m curious about why you decided to form the band versus continuing under either your own name or the Projekt Electronic Amerika moniker—was it about creating two separate entities as the music took on a new identity?
Yeah, I think because it had vocals and the intention was to bring in more people in the band, it made sense to create a band name. Did it make sense to me? It did at the time. As you say, it really is an evolution and progression from Islands, but it was different enough to me because I was writing lyrics now, it seemed more like a band. But then again, it wasn’t, you know, the Alan Parsons Project, it wasn’t about me as the front person, I wasn’t going to be the singer. It seemed like it would be odd to release it under my name, but have Oscar be the singer. With Brian Eno, he sang, so he could have a hundred musicians and collaborators and styles, but he’s still the singer…
So let’s talk about recording The Rope. Can you tell us about some of your processes and techniques along the way?
So, there was a format Cassette Porta Studio which was an average cassette tape that ran at double speed and used both sides of the tape using all four tracks at once. I recorded in my dorm room with some cheap microphone I had. I had one keyboard with me at college—it was all very primitive. Then I went back to Florida to record vocals with Oscar; we recorded in his living room and did the whole album in two hours in one afternoon. He was already prepared since I sent cassettes of a rough mix of the material with me poorly singing so he could get an idea of what I was thinking as far as song and vocal structure.
Since you were exclusively releasing cassettes at the time, what made you decide to release on vinyl? It was 1986, so I doubt CDs were widely available at the time…
CDs existed, but I certainly didn’t have the money to make them. There was one LP before that, Tanzmusic. For The Rope, I decided to press something like 300 or 500 copies on vinyl, and that was the only way the album existed until I reissued it in 1990 on CD and cassette.
How did you distribute the album at the time? Did you shop for other labels before deciding to develop Projekt into a full-fledged DIY label?
Well, I had already been doing my cassettes by mail order, which we sent for a review in a magazine and some little ad somewhere and then people would write about them. I don’t remember if The Rope actually got any distribution to be honest. I remember submitting it, and I remember getting rejected by some distributors…
Did they at least listen to it? I swear to God nobody listens to anything anymore…
Well, that’s right, now they don’t listen. They just go, “is this in a genre we could sell?” Which might arguably be better for the band in a way, you don’t have that first filter. So yeah, I can’t say for sure if the album had much real distribution. If you have the original LP there’s a logo on the back for some company who claimed they were going to help distribution, but then they vanished. They ghosted. They thought they could market us like The Moody Blues. I was like “Uh, no, no you can’t do that…”
Hey, I love The Moody Blues! I’d rather listen to them than a lot of new darkwave, no shame! Though at the time, I could imagine that’s not what you wanted to hear…
No, it wasn’t, they might as well have said The Doors, you know? It felt so irrelevant to what was going on at the time and what I was trying to do.
Not to die on this hill or anything, but I can see a certain classical/neoclassical thread running through some Blacktape and Moody Blues material. Maybe it’s just me since I love both bands. It’s also very minor, but I sometimes hear the more prog-like folk bands like Strawbs or Pentangle in some of your song structures, but that could just be my brain wanting to find a connection between all these adjacent genres…
I mean, there were certainly some English folk and prog bands that I liked, and I loved Hero & Heroine by the Strawbs and some of Ghosts, and Dave Cousins’ Two Weeks Last Summer, but I don’t think I was really going for that, at least not intentionally. Unto Ashes certainly fit more into that category.
Though I guess prog could also capture things like Tangerine Dream and some more new age and ambient material, which I do hear at the heart of much of the early Blacktape material. At the time though, it did seem like in a world of goth rock bands, there wasn’t much out there that sounded like Black Tape for a Blue Girl, so I could see how it would be hard for a distributor or reviewer to figure out what to make of you.
I think if you were aware of 4AD and This Mortal Coil, you could make that connection, but yeah, a lot of reviewers said we sounded like Sisters of Mercy…
No, that’s not even CLOSE!
Not at all, though I guess you could argue that Oscar sounds like some of the English goth vocalists, but that’s the beginning and end of the comparison. Sisters of Mercy are a rock band. “Memory, Uncaring Friend,” the first track on The Rope is a rock song I guess, but the rest of the record isn’t rock at all!
I love that song by the way. It’s one of my early favorites. It’s certainly got guitars, but it has such an unconventional beat and song structure. The guitars are almost thin and textural compared to the synths, while the beat is so prominent and treated…
By “treated” you mean the echo effect because it was recorded in a garage (laughs)! We certainly weren’t able to run everything through an ARP synthesizer like Low, but we tried to capture some sort of DIY version of that. To be honest, looking back at things, I suppose The Rope would have been considered more of a demo. If I didn’t release it on Projekt I imagine a label would have wanted to re-record it after signing us, putting more money or a big producer behind it.
But I like that about the early material, how primitive and DIY it sounds, it’s certainly part of the charm, in my opinion! So, I know you followed up The Rope really quickly… In fact, all the early Blacktape albums were recorded and released in pretty quick succession. Did you have time to refine your process?
For Mesmerized by the Sirens, my school had an eight track recorder, so I expanded and started recording eight tracks instead of four. It bumped up the ability to not have to smash everything and not pingponging throughout the mix, so I could make things a little more complex. Also, there are some other textures that came into play from other musicians being involved. Walter Holland playing guitar, Sue Kenny Smith, who is the female vocalist on that record… These things added another layer to the recordings that helped us evolve.
You’re right though, The Rope was 1986, Mesmerized was 1987, Ashes in the Brittle Air was 1989, and A Chaos of Desire was 1991, though I recorded it in 1990.
Still a prolific run! It sounds like you did learn quite a bit over a short period of time, picking up collaborators and band members along the way…
I think those first four records are really a set, a complete idea, and showcases a bit of my learning process there, too. I think A Chaos of Desire, the fourth record, is the most coherent mood of these albums, while Ashes in the Brittle Air has diverse styles. I remember bringing Ashes to a store for consignment, they listened and they asked if it was a various artists album (laughs)!
Chaos brought in Vicki Richards on violin. I think the musicianship really stepped up with her on the record. She’s just so good…
Where did you meet all these wild and wonderful collaborators?
Well, as I mentioned, I met Oscar in Florida because of his band. Vicki I got in touch with through Slap, a project in Miami that she played with. I had written about Slap and Stephen Nester in my zine a few times and I asked him to put me in touch with her. She had several albums in the new age and world music field but she was also working with jazz musicians, so I knew she had a diverse playing style. It was a completely different thing for her to record this material, to play so passionately, which fit really well over the ambient stuff.
There’s also a violinist named J’Anna Jacoby who was playing in The Black Watch at the time…
Oh, I remember them! Quite jangly, if I recall…
Yeah! J’Anna also plays on A Chaos of Desire, on some of the more song-like tracks. She’s now playing with Rod Stewart, in his live band!
Wow, really?! The rise of Black Tape for a Blue Girl also intersects with the rise of the Projekt label. What was the first thing you put out on the label that wasn’t your own material?
The first artist thing that wasn’t a solo record or a Blacktape album was a compilation of Attrition in 1990, which is pretty fitting as I still work quite closely with Martin Bowes, who does the mastering for my music. Projekt also licensed the Peyote record by O Yuki Conjugate pretty early on.
That’s a really special record…
Definitely. Otherwise, I think the first band that debuted on the label was Lycia. Then came Love Spirals Downward, Lovesliescrushing, and Soul Whirling Somewhere, all in quick succession. Three of the first four bands were in Arizona at the time. Projekt was originally thought of as “a southwestern label,” which is interesting since I don’t think there were that many goth bands from that area. It’s strange to me that Phoenix was such a hotspot for goth and ethereal music…
There’s a whole genre I like to call “desert goth” which incorporates a lot of the early Projekt bands, things like Abecedarians and Psi Com, Red Temple Spirits, etc. alongside bands from Independent Project Records like Savage Republic and Autumnfair. There was a certain psychedelia and bleakness that ran through the scene that certainly seems to be a California/Arizona construct, which is interesting since it’s such a sunny place!
Anyway, how did the first Projekt bands find you? Did you put out a call for bands?
Not quite, they were all bands that sent us demos and hadn’t released anything on other labels, so I worked with the bands to develop material into their first album. Lycia and Soul Whirling Somewhere mixed their records at my place in California. I still get demos by email, so it’s a similar idea, but back then a band had to take time to make a tape and mail the tape, they had to put effort into it!
So, was it always your intention to release other artists, or did it just develop naturally?
I think that once Blacktape started getting some distribution and reviews, it seemed like the infrastructure existed for it. I’d been friends with Martin from Attrition since the very early 1980s when I reviewed some of his music. I figured I’d put something else out into that channel and see what happened.
CDs were so expensive to make back then. The Attrition release eventually paid itself back, I decided to keep putting more things into that channel to see what would happen. The problem with early distribution though was that they weren’t really paying us. In the early 1990s, we had something going with Tower Records where we were owed $30,000, they said they’d pay SOME of that if we sent them Projekt’s new releases—blackmail basically. It was a shady business, I knew they were always going to be shitty, but they knew that I really needed the distribution.
Wow. I mean I guess music industry bullshit like that has never changed, though it seems like they were a little more upfront about it back then!
We can jump forward to 1997 when Projekt hooked up with Ryko for distribution and they were really professional, not a bunch of scammers ripping off bands left and right. Between having a better distribution company and getting to the age of computers, it was much easier for Projekt as a business. It wasn’t until 1991 that I could actually do Projekt full-time and in those early days we did everything by fax machine and telephone, and I was only able to focus on things here and there as I was also working on computer graphics at the time. I had two lives in those early years.
I know I’m jumping around a bit, when I moved to Chicago in 1996, Projekt grew to thirteen employees. The label was pretty large and was costly, but the Blacktape albums like This Lush Garden Within and Remnants of a Deeper Purity were doing well enough to justify it. Remnants is still the best seller from the band…
Well, with good reason, it seems to be the most accessible in some ways. My mom liked that album!
Yeah, and it’s interesting because stylistically, it’s not really a goth album…
That might be the secret though, I see it more as a classical record, which is obviously a beloved genre. I’d argue that This Lush Garden Within is the darkest record you’ve done. It’s possibly my favorite, but it’s also not an easy one to jump into as a first timer. But to follow it up with something so… beautiful, was an interesting move.
1997 and 1998 were probably the peak of the music industry, as far as selling records. I’m going to guess over time that the Remnants album sold like 17,000 copies and has been the best seller on the label for some time. But yeah, it’s not really a “goth record” to me. Though I guess if you consider Dead Can Dance goth, then maybe?
Well, if you want to split hairs, I’d say the first two Dead Can Dance albums and the first EP are “goth” for sure, but they moved away from it pretty quickly. Anyway, why do you think Remnants is the best seller? Right place, right time?
Absolutely. I think having Ryko distribution meant Projekt could get the album into Borders and places like that. You can’t really say that anymore…
I guess not. I do see vinyl at Barnes & Noble these days, but it’s usually legacy releases and modern rock/pop artists and every Pearl Jam album in triplicate. Nothing quite as subversive as a Black Tape for a Blue Girl album… Though maybe I haven’t been looking hard enough.
Well, our reissues are available to Barnes & Noble at this point, but it’s just a matter of someone from a particular location ordering one! At the same time, Projekt was putting out Lycia’s Cold and Excelsis: A Dark Noel, both of which did really well, and I think I have the Ryko distribution to thank for that. If Remnants of Deeper Purity had come out three years earlier, would it have been the right time for it? You know, hard to say!
On a related note, what Blacktape album would you suggest for a first-time listener?
Man, I don’t know, because it depends on if someone’s wanting something with melody or a traditional song or something more esoteric and ambient. If someone wants something with more traditional songwriting, I’d probably recommend A Chaos of Desire over Remnants of a Deeper Purity.
Well, I know it’s certainly hard to choose a favorite child, so I won’t press further. Speaking of the catalogue though, I know you’ve often re-recorded songs over the years. For example, there are several versions of “Memory, Uncaring Friend” with different vocalists, as well as new updates of “Across a Thousand Blades,” which is kind of “the hit” isn’t it? I also remember you submitted a 2025 remix of “Within These Walls” for the No Songs Tomorrow box set I put together for Cherry Red. What drives you to revisit the body of work and update it over the years?
Well, I would say with “Across a Thousand Blades,” it was that I never got the mix right and I tried adding things over the years. The mix I did for the 2020 remastered edition of Ashes in the Brittle Air at the end of the second disc is the one I finally got right, in my opinion.
Across a Thousand remixes!
Yeah, we didn’t really record any new parts for that one. The electric guitar on the original mix was pretty buried and then in another version it came up maybe too loud and so on. Then we started playing it live in 1996 and I replaced the bass sound since I couldn’t find the original bass sound anymore…
When we started playing with Bret Helm from Audra as our singer, we were interested in capturing the sound of the band as a moment in time. Same when Athan Maroulis became our singer. Overall, there’s probably about 10-12 reworkings of older songs that have ended up on a compilation or as a b-side or something like that. We did “Memory, Uncaring Friend” in 2003 with Bret singing on top of the original track but I also re-recorded it completely in 2009 with Athan. That version had Brian Viglione from Dresden Dolls on drums, and it felt more immediate. I always thought that song could have been tighter, almost like a Gary Numan song…
Overall though, we still want to keep the essence of things. There are artists like Frank Zappa for example, who entirely altered older albums, replacing drums with drum machines, and that’s not really what I’m trying to do with that.
I agree with that. I’m not a fan of the George Lucas “revisionist history” thing. I’m all for alternate mixes, especially if they’re an improvement over the original, but at the same time, the original version should still be available for people who are used to it. Why deny the work exists? There’s permanence to art once it’s released and to pretend that’s not the case is frustrating and confusing, especially in the streaming era. So I like what you’ve done, putting out exclusive mixes on compilations, remixing albums for a bonus disc, and so on. As a collector, this gives me a reason to seek it out and it adds to the discography instead of replacing it.
Exactly. With the new version of The Rope that’s coming out on 2CD and 2LP, I’m offering both the remastered original mix as well as a new mix I did of the album. The new mix isn’t that drastically different from the old mix. It’s just that the levels are right now that I had time to mix it. Some of the instruments that got buried before are a little louder. It’s like the Steve Wilson mixes that I’ve heard that aren’t really trying to be something new, they’re just trying to make the original sound a little bit clearer.
They’ve done that with a few Bowie mixes, too. There are some complete reworkings or reimaginings of some albums that are great, and there are some so-so mixes, but the new version of Lodger is my preferred, since that was a dicey mix in the first place. However, as I said, I think there’s a certain charm to the early Blacktape records, that youthful abandon and inexperience that actually can elevate things. That said, it’s great you have all the tapes and are able to go back and make things sound the way you really wanted them to.
I definitely have heard from many people that say The Rope is their favorite album and that’s the mix I did in two hours way back when. So I do have to honor that…
Right, why deny it ever happened, especially since it’s out there on various formats.
Yeah, and of course, with art, a listener doesn’t perceive mistakes the same way the artist might. Same thing with live performances. Sometimes I’ve come off stage thinking that a song didn’t really work, but then people come up to me and say they loved the show. You have to believe that, even if it’s not what you feel.
I’ve been there more times than I can count. I’m my own worst critic on stage and if I play something even a little differently, not even necessarily a mistake, that sometimes has colored my feelings about the show, for better or for worse. Everyone’s tastes and perceptions are a little different…
Yeah, I feel like as long as you didn’t get booed off stage, then it was probably a good show (laughs).
Well, speaking of live shows, did you really only start playing live in 1996?
Yes. I played one show in 1983 or 1984 in Florida and played a few with Walter Holland in 86-87 in California. We had an electronic band called Doppler Shift and we played a couple of shows
And Blacktape’s first show was at the 1996 ProjektFest?
Yes. I was talking with Pat, who I play with in his project Thanatos, about projects that have one person and how difficult it is to tour and deal with clubs every night. So we thought maybe we should do a festival in Chicago, have people come to us rather than make the bands go from city to city. This way, we could hone in our sound. So yeah, Black Tape for a Blue Girl’s first show was ProjektFest in 1996.
Wow, no warm-ups—just right into the fray!
Yeah! I don’t do that now. When we started touring after that, we’d do a smaller show before hitting a major city, making sure that New York City is not the first gig of the tour.
I know people (myself included) who still talk about ProjektFest and how it was such a scene staple. Did you do them every year, or was it sporadic?
We did 1996 and 1997 in Chicago. Those were two nights each. Then in 1998 we did one night in LA, Philly, Chicago, and New York, but they weren’t back to back, there was some gap between them as far as I remember. There were also different lineups in Los Angeles, I think Faith and the Muse and Love Spirals Downwards played on those bills since they were based in California.
As for our live set in ‘96 and ‘97, I relied on Oscar to be the musical director for the band since he had played out so much in his other bands. I wasn’t experienced, so I leaned on him to help get the live band, the Remnants-era band, rehearsed properly.
At a show in November 1998, we played at an art museum in Philadelphia in the afternoon and Vicki and I stayed behind to do an instrumental set while the rest of the band went to New York to set up. Vicki and I finished the set and took the train since it was a quick train ride between the two cities.
Wow, that was a risky thing to do—so many things that could have gone wrong!
Yeah, if we missed the train, we’d have been out of luck, but the NYC show was opening for The Creatures at Irving Plaza, so we couldn’t pass it up! We did have a backup plan, the sound guy was going to play my parts along with a backing track if I didn’t make it.
But you did make it!
Yeah, fortunately! I remember that the Irving Plaza stage isn’t very big and we were very cramped up in the front.
Ah, classic… I’m sure there was a massive drum kit with all kinds of wild percussion up there.
Right, Budgie’s set up. It was very stressful, but now it’s a good story!
So after those first wave of shows, did playing live become a much bigger priority? It seems like the records were more and more spaced out from that point, which would make sense if you were focusing on the live aspect of the band.
It was 1999 when we started touring more. Before that it was those festival shows really, and it was just a way to promote the band. On tour we’d end up playing goth club nights where there would be fast-paced dancing and then we’d come in and kind of slow things down for a while.
If I look at the numbers, I think we did something like 134 shows total over the course of 10-12 years. It wasn’t continuous, the slowdown of releases was partially due to that, but also because running Projekt took more time, there were a lot of bands on the label, a lot of employees, and then Lisa and I had a baby, so that slowed things down even more, as you might expect.
I’d seen you several times after (not counting that time we played together) but the FIRST time I saw Black Tape for a Blue Girl was at the ProjektFest in Philadelphia in 2002, and Lisa was pregnant with your son. That whole weekend was pretty incredible, I still think of it very fondly. Was that the last year of ProjektFest?
No, there was one in 2007 that was smaller. It seemed people were past the point of coming to festivals.
Yeah, and I imagine the label roster had grown to a much larger capacity at that point, with bands scattered across the US and beyond. You were also releasing a lot of ambient releases, branching out into shoegaze, and so on. How did your signing process evolve over the years?
At this point, it was less about demo tapes and more that someone who was already on the label would recommend a band. Though I signed Mira quickly after Regina gave us a demo tape at one of our Florida shows.
Bold!
Yeah, same with Voltaire. We were in the van with nothing else to listen to, so we’d pop in demo tapes. I can’t remember what the last physical demo I got, but now it’s all Soundcloud links and private playlists, not even downloads. I don’t want to deal with files anymore.
I admire what you built with Projekt—it was all a labor of love, and there are so many great bands I wouldn’t have heard if you didn’t spend much of your time cultivating the label. Maybe I’m romanticizing that a bit, but I think you did the right thing, but I dunno, I’m not you and couldn’t say if you’re satisfied with Blacktape’s trajectory…
Honestly, if my band had had a manager in 1997 after Remnants, they would have said, “Why are you wasting your time promoting those other bands and not working your own band? Your band just sold all these records. Why aren’t you making a new album, man?”
If Lycia had a manager, that manager would have been trying to get them onto a bigger label, right? The band was extremely successful, they’re touring with Type O Negative, they should be on a label where someone can put money behind them. I always thought that it would be GREAT if these bands left the label to move up to somewhere. I always saw Projekt as a starting ground, you know? Metropolis was about signing European bands and bringing them to the US market. I saw Projekt as a place to release great new bands and give them a springboard.
I know that bands like Lovesliescrushing have released material on different labels, but did any of the bands successfully make the jump? It seemed like everyone stuck with Projekt, whether it be a matter of loyalty or convenience. Again, that’s a romantic notion…
Yeah, it’s all hindsight now, but these bands needed a good manager who played the game knowing what the next steps are and how to get to the point you want to get to, but none of us had managers. For a period, Lycia was full-time touring, but everyone else it was their hobby. It wasn’t their full-time job. Some of the bands wanted to go from working day jobs to having a full-blown music career but it was the in-between part that they weren’t pushing for.
I get it, it’s a lot of hard work and money for just a roll of the dice.
Yeah, and even with Blacktape, I can look back now and Blacktape should have toured with Oscar, because he was the voice people knew and he was dramatic and charismatic on stage, but he was in Miami and he had a family and he was doing what he needed to do, so, it wasn’t possible.
Well, there’s something to be said about that, then…
There’s a band I used to know, who I won’t name, and they always were talking about a future where they’re selling 50,000 records. I told them to be realistic, they’re not even selling 3,000. 50,000 is not the next step, you need to take the step to 10,000, little by little. Being a successful band takes a lot of listening to others and nobody really likes that…
So, continuing the Blacktape story, as the band continued, you often worked with different collaborators, like Bret Helm who we mentioned before, Michael Laird from Unto Ashes, and so on. I really adore The Scavenger Bride, which is pretty much the peak of the sound you were going for in the nineties in my opinion, still lush, very dramatic, very literary, all the things I look for in music. Then, shortly after, starting with Halo Star, you changed styles to incorporate more cabaret and steampunk influences. What inspired that shift?
I think every artist has the optimistic belief that they can be like Bowie: that they can do different things and have everyone follow them on the journey, but in retrospect, I don’t think everyone can because not everyone has a wide enough audience base. There’s a lot I really like about 10 Neurotics, but I think listeners weren’t really looking for that.
Well, it’s not like you didn’t hint at that sound a bit on Halo Star, and I know that sound and style was popular, at least in the NYC goth scene at the time. There was something literary and romantic about that, too, so even if it’s not my go-to genre, there’s still times where that sound can hit the spot. Anyway, did the folks you were working with go on the journey with you as well, aside from Athan?
Well, I usually have a song written and then I bring in people to play on it. We did that with The Scavenger Bride, where Michael Laird would come in and add textures, and in other cases, sometimes the percussion would drive the song more, but the real basis of the song would exist before I brought anyone else in. The secret is bringing in interesting musicians who can work within that structure. “Inch Worm” actually was written before Halo Star, but I couldn’t figure out the song until much later. The same is true with “the Turbulence and the Torment” from This Lush Garden Within, which was recorded during A Chaos of Desire.
With 10 Neurotics, I worked with Brian Viglione. I was looking for a drummer, despite not caring much for drummers generally, but the music asked for that. I think drummers do a bit too much and are a bit too busy. My favorite drummer is Steve Jansen from Japan since he doesn’t overplay, he does what’s needed to create the right mood. So, working with Brian, he was a really great musician who understood my musical language and was able to shape the song and not overdo it, unless that was required.
This is weird, but ultimately, how you publicize the record does stick in people’s head for how they perceive the record. I think 10 Neurotics was probably over-publicized in one direction. You know, if the one sheet had been written differently, I think people would have given it more of a shot and perceived it differently. It’s kind of like what you put in the movie trailer has a lot to do with how people think your movie’s going to be. Sometimes that’s right. Sometimes it’s not.
One of the tracks is a steampunk-mixed-with-Philip-Glass thing. We also worked with Lucas Lanthier from Cinema Strange. Then there’s a few tracks in the middle where Nicki Jane sings. As you said, with Halo Star, I think that record reflected the sound of us playing in clubs. The songs are a bit more upbeat.
There was a larger gap between those two, and then an even bigger gap between 10 Neurotics and These Fleeting Moments, where it seemed you went back to a more classic sound. What happened during those years?
I spent time writing Rye in 2012 and then moved to Portland in 2013. I wanted to write another book, but instead I decided to spend time acclimating to Portland. There was an EP called Bike Shop in 2016 that Michael Plaster from Soul Whirling Somewhere sings. These were songs I had written on guitar, I really loved that it was acoustic and a very coherent, but different, feeling. I wish more people had heard it because Soul Whirling Somewhere hadn’t done an album in 18 years or something like that. I wrote lyrics to fit Michael’s personality, almost like he was a character in the story. I crowdfunded that EP and the delays in manufacturing pushed it close to the release of These Fleeting Moments.
That album was intentionally going back more to the Remnants-ish sound. Oscar had retired from music at that point, so he hadn’t sung on anything since As One Aflame Laid Bare By Desire. I asked if he would want to sing on it. He then suggested that Danielle, his daughter, could sing the female vocal parts. It worked out quite well.
I don’t quite know how many people have been in Black Tape for a Blue Girl over the years. It’s got to be in the 40-50 people range, you know, between collaborators and vocalists. With a few exceptions, I generally liked having singers that were exclusively in my band and not guests from another band like This Mortal Coil.
Right, I suppose Athan and Oscar had been in previous bands but those bands had broken up by the time they joined Blacktape. I guess Bret from Audra is the exception to that rule, though Audra took some time off when he was in the band.
Yeah I guess I sort of contradicted myself here. On the most recent album, I had Jon DeRosa who’s band is Aarktica as well as his own solo work. Audra were one of the bands who we met early on because they opened up for us in Austin. Audra had two albums on Projekt and everything worked well on the Blacktape albums Bret sang on; he fit perfectly with the sound. We recorded the vocals for The Scavenger Bride at Steve Roach’s studio, if I remember correctly. Athan lived in Brooklyn, near where I lived, so it made it easy to work with him around that time.
I feel like I saw the band with Bret three times: ProjektFest, a show at Downtime where the Mirror Reveals opened when I just moved to the city, and a show a little later when local friends The Hunt and Martial Canterel played. I think that was at Europa, that old dance club turned venue. I really liked that place, as weird as it was…
Was that the club in Greenpoint? I have a recording of that show. I’ll have to dig it out and transfer it someday.
Well you’ve been releasing a lot of work-in-progress mixes and live shows as part of the subscriber project, right? Perhaps it’s time to put that one up!
Yeah, true, I did put up a live video of a whole show from 1998 on YouTube and some audio here and there, one from the 2002 festival that I sang, which is relatively rare.
Let’s talk about the last three albums!
There have been three Blacktape albums that I recorded since moving to Portland in 2013. These Fleeting Moments, To Touch the Milky Way, and The Cleft Serpent. The Cleft Serpent was the first album with only three band members. There are no instrumentals and all the songs feature male vocals. It really was an album that was written for characters: the Cleft Serpent and the Trickster.
I’d known Jon, the vocalist on the album, since New York. He opened for a lot of Projekt bands/shows dating back to when he was 16-17—something like that. We worked on a track together in 2020 that was a reworking of the Aarktica track “Eating Rose Petals.” It was an experiment to see how we’d work together and it went incredibly smoothly. He understands Blacktape since he’s known the band since he was young. I used the same process as always where I recorded the vocal melody and lyrics and sent it to Jon to perform, it’s all predetermined. He was able to record it in a studio in LA without me, which I’d never done before. He gave me four takes so I could pick between the different emotions he’s put into it. For him, some of the lyrics were more dramatic than what he’s used to singing. Once he started thinking about it as a character, rather than as his own authentic feeling, he got into what I was writing for him….
But that’s sort of the Blacktape style, isn’t it? There are always characters. Something like “The Lie Which Refuses to Die” or “Tell Me You’ve Taken Another” are character-driven. It’s great that Jon gets that and is able to bring that to the table and that you still have that structure.
That was always the plan. When I had seen Oscar’s original band, I knew that I could write a song with that much drama in it because he had the power that Bowie or Freddy Mercury or Marc Almond had. Oscar, or Athan, or Jon could give the songs what I needed to make them work.
Yeah, there’s so much of that kitchen sink drama there, like Scott Walker had as well.
Right. Marc Almond’s Torment & Toreros and Mother Fist And Her Five Daughters were early touchstones. You know: sad people who fucked up their lives and lost everything yet are blaming others for the things they’ve fucked up. Maybe if someone was writing about their own life, they would walk back certain things or not sound as proud about what they messed up, but if someone else is singing, I feel like we can take that as far as it needs to go. With The Cleft Serpent, I love the cohesiveness of just three people in the band. The songs all feel like one mood.
So what are you working on now? What’s next for Blacktape? I know you’ve been working on some solo material and other projects as well as reissues, but is there any new music in progress?
No, I haven’t been working on anything for Blacktape. I just released an electronic drone album called The Width of Shadows and I’m also working on another drone album in collaboration with Arin, a Projekt artist in Norway. Honestly, the process of recording makes me so annoyed. It’s so tedious. I figure it takes 400 hours to record a Blacktape album because I’m compulsive and strive for perfection that no one can hear. It drives me nuts to be like that. I hope one day I’ll be able to do a Blacktape album in two weeks so I’m not so obsessed about everything.
I did a different project called Nova Cat Purring Sounds where I took my kitty’s purring, and some of it is just purrs and some of it is accompanied by ambient music. I must mention that Nova has passed away since then. But it was so easy to make and very therapeutic. It was pleasant to put together this album in a week or two. With the most recent electronic album, I tried to use the same process and not be so obsessive. It’s interesting, too, because, like I said earlier, there’s something to be said about making mistakes in art. Mistakes can be interpreted by others as passion, and in the end, who’s right? The one who created it, or the one who has a connection to the work once it’s out. released?
Well that also ties in to the punk/post-punk scene that we all come from. Not that Blacktape is punk by definition, but there’s that DIY spirit that runs through your work. That said, making an ambient record out of cat purrs is pretty punk in a way! I sincerely mean that.
Well, you know, I started listening to music in 1976 or so, and although I wasn’t listening to punk bands at the time, the whole punk idea to me is definitely in there in the sense that I started a record label to release music, built up a fan base, and didn’t wait for somebody’s permission to do that thing. I have lived the last 30-35 years with Projekt helping people put out their music and there’s a wide variety of releases on the label. There are maybe 650 releases on the label now and it’s pretty great being able to survive in the music industry. So I mean it in the Punk DIY aesthetic, not waiting for permission. Just do it!
I don’t really know when I will make another Blacktape for a Blue Girl record, it’s not on my mind right now, but I am grateful for everything the label has done, all the support people have given me and the bands, and everything I’ve been able to do along the way.
Thanks for talking, it was great catching up! §
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