This label sampler works well as a label sampler. At least it did for me — I wasn’t really aware of Erased Tapes as an entity before I got this album. I had bought stuff from a number of the people featured here — David Allred, Peter Broderick, Nils Frahm etc — but I had never made the connection before.
This made me pay attention, and whenever Erased Tapes release something now, I at least give it a go. They’re not as consistent as, say, 4AD in the 80s, but they’ve got a certain aesthetic and quite a lot of it’s good.
And as an album, this is really good — the sequencing is great; it flows well. But perhaps not surprising:
1+1=X sees Erased Tapes artists come together to make an album as a collective. Sharing the same space, instruments and each others’ capabilities during a residency at Vox-Ton studio in Berlin, they recorded 20 songs to mark the label’s 10-year history.
04:19 Qasim Naqvi - Brutal Moderna 04:20 A Winged Victory for the Sullen - Long May It Sustain 05:10 Rival Consoles - Ritual 03:06 Nils Frahm - Frau Dehlholm 05:48 Daniel Thorne - Iroise 05:11 Daniel Brandt - Blackpool Sands Forever 08:13 Douglas Dare - Darling 04:18 Michael Price - Eyn Hallow 03:43 Kiasmos & Högni - Zebra 04:45 Ben Lukas Boysen - Pending 04:50 David Allred - Ahoy 03:31 Anne Müller - Bel Tono 17:04 Lubomyr Melnyk - Palisade 1 04:44 Hatis Noit - Inori 04:06 Masayoshi Fujita - Spaceship Magical 03:57 Högni - Máni 05:23 Peter Broderick - The Perpetual Glow 05:36 Arthur Jeffes & Nils Frahm - Up is Good 04:27 Daniel Brandt - Blackpool Sands Forever (Rival Consoles Remix) 06:10 Penguin Cafe - Wheels Within Wheels (Greg Gives Peter Space Remix)
This blog post is part of the Record Label Samplers series.