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Album reviews Music

The Music Tapes

Rating: NNN


Some nostalgics love the grit of vinyl. Others, like ex-Neutral Milk Hotel’s Julian Koster, use an 1895 Edison wax cylinder recorder and a 1940s wire recorder to channel bygone eras. Nine years in the making, Music Tapes For Clouds And Tornadoes digs a time tunnel to Depression-era lo-fi tones. You can almost see lonely, penniless souls expiring peacefully to the elegiac singing saw.

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The Tapes also weave in short, spooky kolyadas, or carols. Schedrevka is a New Year’s carol that incorporates a Ukrainian folk song about guelder roses that I hadn’t heard since I was in grade school. Now, that’s nostalgia.

The record has a strong holiday flavour, so if you’re the type who gets nauseated by reindeer talk in March, maybe wait till December to play this. Of course, then you’ll also miss out on jingle-bells-free highlights like In An Ice Palace and The Minister Of Longitude.

Top track: The Minister Of Longitude

The Music Tapes rock you like it’s 1932 at Lee’s Friday (February 27).

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