Halo Star

Black Tape For A Blue Girl | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (July 16, 2007)
• Original Release Date: July 16, 2007
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Projekt Records
• ASIN: B0002LE9QI
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #391,199 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This album gets 5 starts - without a doubt!, September 2, 2004

By 

Igor (Horror-Web.Com) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Halo Star (Audio CD)

This album is an exquisite mix of tribal, folk, and dark-wave sounds that will send lyrical bliss to your soul. Old fans will agree that this is a powerful comeback as well as one of the best CD's put out by Black Tape; new fans will be mesmerized by the silky vocals of Grant & Helm and fall in complete love with the dark-wave genre. This is also the first album in a long while for BTBG that prominently features male vocals!

The first track "Glow" sends you on a wild tantalizing tribal tour into depths of unknown wonder. Short but sweet, it meshes into the second track, "Tarnished". Helm's Gothic vocals intertwined with the tribal beats melts even the most blackened heart. Track 3 is one of my favorites. "The Gravediggers" is a soft, melodically dark, and morbidly beautiful song telling a story of a person about to be buried, lost in limbo it appears. Exquisite! Grant finally graces our ears with her vocal presence in the 4th track "Your love is sweeter than wine" Hello! This woman's voice is as sweet and luxurious as honey! Grant again seduces us with track 5 "Indefinable, yet" sharing her indefinable love and Helm adds some background vocals which make this an absolutely beautiful rendition of a Gothic love song (Is there such thing? Gothic LOVE song?) and the instrumental splashes of bells, flute, and acoustic guitar (played by Helm) sets your love ablaze. "Knock three times" is a campy upbeat little Gothic tune that leaves your toes a tapping and fingers a snappin while the rest of your being is absolutely creeped out. I mean c'mon, wouldn't you be if someone told you they were trying to bring back their dead lover? Track 7 the vocals are reminiscent to The Church and the music will simply blow you away. Track 8 "Damn Swan!" Grant is back at it again, her sultry honey like voice mesmerizes and seduces you with this song of innocence lost. Track 9 "Already Forgotten" Grant's vocals along side beautiful piano and cello brings tears to your eyes with this sad sad story of loss and memories. The rest of this CD is just simply amazing! I'm telling you, pleading with you, listen to the sample tracks, you are going to fall in love, you must purchase this CD!

Black Tape for a Blue girl will be on tour in September and October.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Beautful, wistful, lovely, March 13, 2005

By 

superinkygrrl "fixating daily so you don't ha... (Portland, OR) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Halo Star (Audio CD)

I resisted listening to BTFABG for years. And when I did hear them, it was completely out of context, just a random track here & there, so I wrote them off. What a mistake! I'm glad I came back to them and gave "Halo Star" a listen.

They remind me immediately of the old Dead Can Dance. Where DCD went deeply into experimenting with period and culturally specific instruments, this album still retains that otherwordly quality that I fell in love with all those years ago that DCD embodied so perfectly.

Each song flows into each other softly and smoothly. There's nothing scary or disjointed about them at all. The album itself transformed me to this sort of dreamy aural landscape. It's like a personal soundtrack to your own independent film all about you!

It doesn't surprise me that BTFABG has not and never will hit the mainstream. In a way, I hope they don't so I can keep them as a precious secret and dazzle the uninitiated. Don't you?

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Halo and smoke comes down from Heaven, September 21, 2004

By 

R. Saunders "night_spun" (Boise, ID USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Halo Star (Audio CD)

When I mention Halo and smoke, it is a metaphor for the feeling I got when listening to the cd; its components of the character Halo on the cd with the visceralness of the music (smoke), which then translated into my sensation awareness of what went on during the live show which I booked in Boise, where I live. The show was amazing and full of sights and sounds to behold and savor, and my intense awareness of the smoke that filled the stage from the fog machine really heightened my overall impression of this cd. This cd is subtle, and it has grown on me since the time I originally heard it when Sam Rosenthal sent it to me as a promoter's copy.

Much of the music on this cd may seem too subtle to the average listener of darkwave and ethereal music (or even the average music lover); but upon further inspection, a rawness and depth is so clearly present in the songs included on this album, and the common thread of the character Halo is stitched perfectly into the fabric of the songs as they trail each other...each successively more complex than the next. Highlights include "Tarnished" which is the official opener on this album, even though "Glow" comes before it as a prelude to "Tarnished" brushing beautiful Eastern drumbeats and an eerie soundscape of what is to come. "Scarecrow" is wonderfully layered with male vocals over intense music and mystification. "Knock three times" provides a lighter but not-to-be-forgotten presence with its bit of campy humor alongside whispered piano and dark vocal styling. "Dagger" is easily one of my favorites on this album. When I hear this track, I feel as though I am instantly one and the same with a brilliant ray of light and mist radiating from the descending ashes of sadness that seems to weigh so heavily upon the tapestry of this musical expression. It is that complex, and heavenly male vocals mesh perfectly with the unbroken progression of this amazing, understated song. All tracks are replete with unique style and have their own story to tell, magnified by Bret Helm's (of Audra) marvelous, dark and breathy voice and Elysabeth Grant's supernatural vocals coming through the drumbeats and wall of sound in the music surrounding it.

"Already Forgotten", though beautifully full of Elysabeth Grant's achingly haunted vocals, seems almost a little too repetitious of music on other albums. But the way the piano dances around the voice in this track is quite mesmerizing. Despite remnants here and there from black tape's previous material (which is not a detriment), their newest offering has as much substance as any other album I've listened to, perhaps more with the additon of one of the strongest and most hypnotic male singers I have ever had the privilege of hearing (live and recorded).

I cannot recommend this album enough to music lovers, especially those with a penchant and ear for darkness and painstakingly crafted arenas that are really much more like soundtracks to moments in life than merely just music. My review only afforded four stars because I have not yet heard in their entirety each black tape album and been able to judge them all equally alongside one another.