Black
Tape for a Blue Girl, Written in Ashes, Burgundy
Satyricon, 125 NW 6th Ave, 243-2380
10 pm Monday, June 28
$8 advance, $10 at the door
If creating verdant, classically orchestrated musical vignettes
is a crime, then Sam Rosenthal is as guilty as Gomorrah. But
his embrace of goth--which, in the hysterical wake of Columbine,
is falsely equated with ritual sacrifice and remorseless violence--is
no reason to condemn him. Rosenthal's band, Black Tape for
a Blue Girl, and his record label, Projekt, represent goth
at its most pensive and gentlemanly, his songs the satiny
susurrations of a mind inflamed by the delicate torments of
desire.
In fact, the only thing even slightly frightening about
Black Tape is the overarching passion Rosenthal has demonstrated
for the past 13 years.
"Goths are intelligent, educated, peaceful," he patiently
explains from Projekt's Chicago office. "People identify
Marilyn Manson with goth, but they don't see the other side
of it, that there's a lot of beautiful music that comes
out of it as well."
The new Black Tape CD, As One Aflame Laid Bare by Desire,
is a consummate example of such beauty. Ghostly female vocals
(from Julianna Towns, formerly of Skinnerbox) flit with
Oscar Herrera's rich, earthy, melodramatic croon. Lisa Feuer's
soft flute floats quietly above the voices. Cello and violin
slip in for extended visits, and smoky wisps of keyboards
wrap everything in a vaporous haze.
The album's elegant soundscapes don't stray too far from
Rosenthal's very first album, The Rope, which initially
appeared as a cassette-only release in 1986. From that starting
point, Rosenthal gradually refined his velvety musical style,
and Black Tape's ethereal, electro-acoustic atmospherics
caught on with audiences that enjoyed the similarly pretty,
intellectually melancholy work of This Mortal Coil, Cocteau
Twins and Dead Can Dance (the last being especially comparable
to Black Tape's pairing of neoclassical motifs with angelic
female and swelling male vocals).
Today, Black Tape remains the top-selling act on Projekt
and is one of the most respected bands in the goth underground.
However, even a cursory listen makes it clear that Rosenthal's
vision is quite different from the Bauhaus-inspired, theatrical
doom-rock most often labeled goth. Rosenthal's lyrics remain
entrenched in the here and now; you won't find any clichés
about Lestat or Bela Lugosi here, just consciously poetic
verse about the travails of heart and mind. Rather than
look to Anne Rice for ideas, on Aflame Rosenthal
gets his inspiration from Duchamp, Baudelaire and Sacher-Masoch.
But Rosenthal's not a snob, nor does he object to being
equated with the pseudo-vampire set. "You can't really deny
who the people are that support you," he says. "It's silly
that in every genre there are people that say, 'I am not
that genre.' The perfect example would be Willie Nelson
saying, 'I am not a country artist.' It's like, 'Well, what
are you then?'"
Even before the Trench Coat Mafia tainted the name of goth,
Rosenthal defended the genre against both outside critics
and deserters from within--such well-known scene cornerstones
as the Cure's Robert Smith, Sisters of Mercy's Andrew Eldritch
and the Banshees' Siouxsie Sioux all scoff at the G label.
Besides, there is an undeniably deliberate sadness in the
Black Tape sound, a tender existential gloom infusing every
shadowy corner. And if that's not goth, what is?
"Happy songs just don't sound right to me," confesses Rosenthal.
"It feels like there's something missing. I think writing
love songs is hard also, because you end up sounding like
Paul McCartney and it comes out really sappy.... But that's
just one side of me, the more introspective side that comes
out when I'm working on the words and music."
While this introspection has often led Rosenthal to raid
his journals for lyric ideas, at the center of Aflame
lies the work of Duchamp, especially his Bride Stripped
Bare by Her Bachelors, Even and Étant
Donnés. Rosenthal says this change in working
habits was a challenge to try something different. "In a
way it's like sampling, but a sampling of ideas, then seeing
how I could incorporate them within my own ideas," he says.
"To me it's more an evolution than a, 'Oh, I don't have
anything to say, what am I going to do?'"
Maybe that wish to expand his influences is what's helped
Black Tape's fan base expand as well. "I think there are
a lot of people who are discovering Black Tape, who were
into things like Brian Eno, John Cale or '70s art-rock kinds
of things and [see] in Black Tape something that continues
that tradition," he observes. "They're into it even though
we don't sound like Yes."
Regardless, after 13 years, the singular, distinctive sound
remains. What's in the future for Black Tape if it's to
evolve further? Rosenthal answers that he's moving to New
York and contemplating multimedia shows involving projections
and modern-dance interpretation. "Right now I'm creating
the music I want to create," he says. "If it starts evolving
some other way, it will.... It's not like I've stayed where
I'm at because I'm afraid to go somewhere else. I see it
as going along a path that makes sense to me."
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Willamette Week | originally
published June 23, 1999
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