the Passage

Album review

Consisting of two lengthy instrumental tracks, The Passage finds Sam Rosenthal, along with violin player Vicki Richards, moving back toward the open-ended electronic instrumental approach that often characterized Black Tape for a Blue Girl's releases before the band's shift to 21st century cabaret. "The Passage" itself is a 40-minute reworking of a piece that grew out of the Projekt label's Ananda Nidra release, the original song itself having first seen incarnation as a 15-minute version on the As One Aflame Laid Bare by Desire album. If the origin is apparently tortuous, at base the version here is essentially an extension of that first piece by time length if not by sound. The soft, evolving interplay of tones, suggestive of both Black Tape's extreme romantic melancholy and the mid-'80s work of longtime Projekt stalwart and Rosenthal inspiration Steve Roach, works elegantly to create something that pretty much invites the listener to settle in and get lost in the sound. Darker, slower movements in the progression of the piece provide a major point of distinction between the original version and this one, though always as a logical extension rather than a radical reworking. "Rae," in contrast, provides a brighter epilogue, as if the passage were completed in a gentler realm, with a similar slow pace but a feeling of something new and fresh thanks to Richards' violin part, further treated for final release.
© Ned Raggett /TiVo