Erased Tapes Schallplatten & CDs

Review: Iceland's Olafur Arnalds (Kiasmos) and German multi-instrumentalist Nils Frahm team up again for some breathtaking excursions in classical/ambient crossover bliss. Frahm's sombre piano passages gently dance over Arnalds' serene soundscapes and eerie field recordings on this bittersweet and emotive journey. What was meant to be a one hour video recording of the duo in action turned out to be an eight hour long improvisation session and these are some of the segments of the wonderful marathon recording. We particularly enjoyed the gorgeously haunting electronic soul captured on "23:52" where those analogue synth strings just rise and rise to an epic climax.

Review: Current scene favourite Nils Frahm teamed up with Icelandic multi-instrumentalist Olafur Arnalds on three breath taking excursions through lush ambient textures on "Stare" as a surprise release back in 2012 for label founder Robert Rath. "A1" features Frahm's entrancing irresistible melody over some gorgeous all-consuming strings and glacial soundscapes courtesy of Arnalds. "A2" with its heavenly, transcendental beauty has just got to be heard while "B1" explores darker territory with its excavating soundscapes accompanying the most hauntingly delicate cello notes. Exquisite!

Review: Erased Tapes, London's purveyors of the new garde in ambient music, take on one of the legends in revered Oregon folk experimentalist Peter Broderick. On the Partners LP, he starts out with the spoken word poetry of the title track, then the sombre piano piece "In A Landscape", complete with eerie tape hiss lurking in the background. Other highlights include the emotional and bittersweet "Carried" and the awe inspiring closing track "Sometimes" where Broderick's vocals come gloriously come into the fold, on a price which is truly captivating and special.

Review: Experimental electronic / dance omni-talent Douglas Dare drops his fourth album Omni via Erased Tapes, physically on a limited red vinyl edition. The British producer and performer commands a beautiful syncretism of rave and narrative, guiding us through a fearless take on modern queer ontology through sonics of "life, death, fate and orgies". Building on his classic fusion of chamber pop, folk and avant-garde music, Omni hears Dare dare to throw a gorier spanner in the works, with pop-out, sensitively textured vocal club tracks paired effortlessly with but juxtaposed against hurt aubades and ballads.

Review: Classically trained pianist turned experimental composer Nils Frahm has previously been fairly prolific, so it's a surprise to find that Solo is his first album is some two years. As the title suggests, Solo is a wonderfully minimal, stripped back affair, full of rich, echo-laden recordings of Frahm sat playing his own piano compositions. He's a past master at creating evocative pieces with the minimal of instrumentation, and Solo is packed full of this kind of yearning, often melancholic fare. He doffs a cap to Steve Reich on the booming, circular chords and slowly shifting refrains of "Wall", while the soft focus "Immerse" is a 10-minute delight.

Review: Nils Frahm's latest must-check full-length excursion is not a brand-new work to mark Piano Day, the annual celebration of the instrument that made him famous, but rather an unheard collection from the vaults. It was recorded for Erased Tapes back in 2009, while he was still a student at the University of Performing Arts Graz, but for some reason they decided not to issue it at the time. It's Frahm at his minimalistic, spine-tingling best, offering up a swathe of solo piano pieces that veer from melancholic meditations, and immersive soundscapes, to genuinely cinematic compositions, yearning jazz interludes and - in the case of the brilliant 'Hammers' - gloriously uplifting workouts for vocal and piano.