When you listen to Remnants of a Deeper Purity it becomes clear that this band has had a tremendous development over the course of the years. Black Tape For A Blue Girl has developed from a Dead Can Dance like ethereal neo-classical gothic band into a band that currently transcends various genres and found a niche of it’s own at the intersection of ambient, gothic and worldmusic. Their sad and majestic style in the first 10 years of the band would become the blueprint for the US Projekt label, led by Black Tape For A Blue Girl’s Sam Rosenthal. On this re-release of the album Remnants of a Deeper Purity, in celebration of the 10 year existance of the band, and originally released in 1996, it shows how distinct their sound was in these days. A mixture of ambient and neo-classical gothic. Majestic, intellectual and ethereal are keywords one can match with it. There are musical comparisons to Stoa and Dead Can Dance.

All compositions have been made by composer and electronica specialist Sam Rosenthal, whilst Lucian Casselman and Oscar Herrera deliver the vocal parts, Vicky Richards plays the violin and Mera Roberts the cello. ‘With My Sorrows’ is a extremely beautiful piece of music, with a melody made by Oscar and the Sephardic song ‘en la mar ay una torre’ processed in it. ‘Fin de Siècle’ has passages that are strongly inspired by the diary letters of Anaïs Nin. ‘For You Will Burn Your Wings Upon The Sun’ has very beautiful violin passages that at times add an Oriental atmosphere to the neo-classical ambient spheres.

The atmosphere is very fragile at moments, such as can be heard in ‘Wings Tattered, Fallen’. Harmonic vocals can be found in the pop-like titletrack ‘Remnants of a Deeper Purity’. The second cd of this special edition of Remnants of a Deeper Purity consists of recordings in which the original compositions are stripped to the string parts solely which creates an intensity and passion that almost transforms it to completely new compositions.

This special re-issue is a real recommendation to fans as well as people that are not familiar with the beautiful music of Black Tape For A Blue Girl.