Bell Orchestre
Recording a Tape the Colour of the Light
(Rough Trade)
Instrumental music has never sounded fuller, more complete, in terms of conjuring a place and telling a story. The place: a big city in winter. A low-end hum remains constant, like the sound of traffic on snow-covered streets. The sound builds in a sonic platform for all sorts of individual and inventive sounds to spring from. The story: a melancholic, not depressing, tale of return. You’re happy to be back, but the place seems forever changed. The instrumentation on Recording a Tape doesn’t merely pass you by in a musical blur. The horns, especially, work to establish the overall mood, which in the end is more important here than individual tracks, much like albums by pop-tinged orchestras Tindersticks or Rachel’s.
—Sean Flinn
This article appears in Dec 6-12, 2007.
