Black Tape For A Blue Girl offers ‘Seven days till sunrise (2024 mix)’ single
In May of 2023, Cherry Red Records asked Black Tape For A Blue Girl aka Sam Rosenthal to contribute “Within these walls” (from the band’s 1986 debut) to a 4CD Darkwave compilation, “No Songs Tomorrow”. Sam offered the original mix as well as a new one; they could pick which they preferred. Note that songwriter Sam Rosenthal went to the cassette Portastudio masters of the band’s 38-year-old debut, “The Rope”, to remix this version.
A single will be released on May 17, “Seven days till sunrise (2024 mix)” back by “the “Within these walls (2024 mix)”.
Sam says: “I was motivated to make the new mix because I wanted to dive into the original 1986 Fostex 4-track cassette Portastudio master tape to see what I could do with it. The original mixes of The Rope were very mushy and rushed. That’s an understatement! I mixed the whole 12-song album in two hours. That’s unheard of; I really had no idea what I was doing (laughs). Creating this mix for Cherry Red was an experiment towards creating a new mix of The Rope album for the 40th anniversary in 2026.”
And he continues by saying: “This mix is much more distinct than the original, you can hear the parts more clearly. Vocalist Oscar Herrera and I both think this version is an improvement, even if perhaps it loses some of the ‘charm’ of the poorly recorded & mixed 1986 version. The Cherry Red 4CD has a May 31 release date. As it’s a physical-only release, I thought it would be good to have the new one up at streaming sites. A 2-song single is always better than a 1-song single, and I knew which track I wanted to remix next. At Spotify, the most played track off The Rope is the instrumental ‘Seven days till sunrise.’ The 2024 mix was less of a struggle compared to ‘Walls.” It was a minimal recording with only three instruments: acoustic guitar, cello & clarinet, each on their own track. It turned out very pretty!”
Songwriter Sam Rosenthal went to the cassette Portastudio masters of the band’s 38-year-old debut, “The Rope”, to remix this version. Eye-openingly, 60% of BlackTape’s Spotify audience is under 34; the song is older than they are! Fans email that they love our introspective, melancholy music introduced to them via the algorithm. This 2024 mix is created in appreciation of Spotify and all our new fans!
Below is the original album both tracks are taken from.
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