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12"
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BLANK 006EP
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"Blank Tapes continues developing its interests in a new kind of sound -- Unreal Word Music -- with the debut release by new signings Spring Tides. Featuring Ghanaian Afla Cey on vocals, lead track 'Burnt Out Moons' reverberates around a juju via danceteria skank. 'Happy Sighs' is an electrical rush of instrumental, Krautrock-esque hooks. On the flip, 'No More Mornings' has been retooled by Hot Chip and, unsurprisingly, sounds like a lost folk song from the future. Closing instrumental 'Fuck The Situationists, Fuck The Wildlife,' despite its title, is a benign reflection, a straight-to-tape head nodder."
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CD
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BLANK 005CD
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"Outstanding debut album from France's Thee, Stranded Horse. Churning Strides is an album that draws you in slowly and then leads you out into a head-space uniquely its own. The work of singer, songwriter and Normandy resident, Yann Tambour, this is a suite of songs that gleams like the moon on water and follows impulses that work like tides, slowly but irresistibly. Playing acoustic guitar and kora -- simultaneously in the case of 'Tainted Days' -- Tambour has a crafted sound that slips and slides from place to place, feeling to feeling. The music of sub-Saharan Africa -- Delta blues -- French chanson -- the lyrical anarchism of Leo Ferre -- the precision and unexpected melodic angles of Joanna Newsom's arpeggios -- the cosmic folk of Marc Bolan's Tyrannosaurus Rex. All of these may come to mind at different points of Churning Strides. None are the key to Thee, Stranded Horse: this is Yann's voice and his lyrics -- written mostly in his fluent English -- their stops, starts and restless shifts from image to sound image. Yann Tambour has previously made music as the founder and orchestrator of Encre, an outfit which made use of samples, guitars (electric and acoustic), as well as other live instruments and his own unmistakable voice. Encre's two albums, Encre (2001) and Flux (2004), were released in France to great acclaim by Clapping Music, but Yann made a clean break in 2006, exploring the kora, moving to the Normandy countryside and dreaming up the acoustic reveries and voices of Thee, Stranded Horse."
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