This is the debut offering from Belgian outfit TAPE CUTS TAPE, a trio consisting of Eric Thielmans (drums, effects), Lynn Cassiers (vocals, toys & effects) and Rudy Trouve (guitar, keys, effects and vocals). I listened to this album and tried to like it, however, it is one that seems to deliberately try to turn the listener against it. A bit like Mark E. Smith from The Fall, this trio seem to take a perverse pleasure in creating some music of real beauty, then marring it with feedback and other sounds that jar and grate against the ear.
Opener, ‘Heavy’ has a melodic guitar line, and breathy vocals similar to that on a Nouvelle Vague album, but has a welter of feedback cutting across the track, which is unsettling and leaves the listener with a slightly uncomfortable feeling, akin to sticking your hand into a bag of jelly beans and picking out a green one expecting lime, only to find it’s pickled gherkin flavour.
‘Petrol Blue’ is a much heavier track, both in tone and in mood. Featuring heavy synth bass and muffled vocals that sound like they’re being shouted through a broken megaphone, this is the sort of track that would certainly have packed nightclubs during the early 1980s on alternative nights.
‘Fay’ is about forty five seconds of atmospheric noises, and is entirely superfluous, leaving me wondering a) why they didn’t just start the next track by adding this on, or b) why they bothered to include it anyway. ‘Chosen Profession’ is altogether better being a duet:- “Just like a sailor or any other profession chosen” lines sung by Rudy, while Lynn’s ethereal voice floats over this with:- “Sometimes, only sometimes.” With a metronomic drumbeat and chiming guitar which builds over the course of the song, this was probably the best track on the album.
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Just after you’ve settled into this, comes ‘Vacuum’, a mixture of discordant guitar plucking and odd synth noises, which immediately brought my mood down. I really can’t see the point of this.
Both ‘Reckless’ and ‘This Red’ lift the mood again, the former being an excellent driving guitar strum the rhythm being pinned down by the drum beat, with some nice breathy “Ooohs” and “Aaahs”, and the latter coming across as a new wave track that sounds a bit like Magazine with Debbie Harry on vocals.
‘School’ has some good wry vocal observations: -“He was wearing lousy clothes, and he had glasses.” Detailing one’s schooldays, but this is spoiled by the atmospherics’, which once again serve to turn what could be a good song into something you’d rather fast forward.
Other tracks, such as ‘Layers’ and ‘Kinder’ tend to blur into one, and the album ends with the appropriately titled ‘Exit’, an instrumental track with what sounds like a kazoo backing some 70s style rock guitar.
Unfortunately, I feel that even hardcore fans of Cabaret Voltaire would find this an uneasy listening experience. This is certainly an acquired taste, and an album that is not digestible in one sitting.
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