This is Sam from Black Tape For A Blue Girl. Thanks to everyone who joined the team that successfully brought the Kickstarter campaign to our goal (and stretch goals.) We're manufacturing a remastered edition of TERRACE OF MEMORIES — my 1992 collaboration with vidnaObmana (Dirk Serries) — in three formats: LP (two color variations), CD, and MiniDisc. Look for them soon here at Bandcamp!

I’m excited to create this reissue with the help of people who believe in Dirk & my art and want to see this campaign succeed – people like you!

🍃 🌿 🍃 🌿 🍃 🌿 🍃 🌿 🔶 🌿 🍃 🌿 🍃 🌿 🍃 🌿 🍃

1992’s TERRACE OF MEMORIES is an organic ambient album of longing and gentle melancholic minimalism. Sam Rosenthal (Black Tape For A Blue Girl’s founder/synthesist based in Los Angeles) and Dirk Serries (then recording under the moniker VidnaObmana in Belgium) created the album the old fashioned way: sending tapes across the world in the mail. The somber, slowly drifting and looping music tips the listener off to its source through a passage of text on the sleeve concerning a lost love. Swelling in deep waves, the five grey unhurried pieces suggest memories of more pleasant times lost forever in the cold, lifeless present. The tracks are appropriately mournful, with a slow grace, as they drift through a world of memories, an endless stream of succulent and stirring reflections. Lose yourself in its green and grey charms.

Back in 1992, England's MUSIC FROM THE EMPTY QUARTER wrote: “More than ever before, Sam lets his emotions run away on a tide of ambient turbulence. Five drifting movements ride the intake of senses, breathing the air of life and surrounding beauty. As fullsome as the cycle of seasons, cascading visions of past and present contact loop and collide. A very deep personal intrusion into the mind & heart, represented by a dark, mysterious and sensual music. Cast adrift into the caring hands of this truly original and honest artist who not only lives within himself, but sheds his soul through others as well.”

I'm sure MFTEQ's appreciation of my work equally applies to Dirk's involvement in the creation of the album. Along with contributing the original basic tracks, he's masterfully remastered the album for this reissue.

Here's Dirk's recollection of the project: “Back in the days, pre-internet, we traded a lot of tapes by mail. Projects and collaborations took much longer to complete due to the longer waiting times, waiting for the postal system to do their work. When I started to correspond with Sam in the mid-80s, I was very into the albums by his Black Tape For A Blue Girl band. The eerie atmospheres and ambience surrounding the songs were really mesmerizing, and I could imagine a blend of Sam’s sound-structures with my ambience. I sent him sources on tape. But with every collaboration release back then, time moved by before something was completed, again due to the slower way of communicating. I appreciated Sam’s brilliant interaction and additional performances. Terrace of Memories is a real Sam Rosenthal & vidnaObmana collaboration, and I truly wonder why we never did a follow-up. Enjoy.”

And my recollections: “As far as I can recall, I began working on this collaboration with Vidna after the recording of A chaos of desire in 1989. Dirk sent me cassette tapes of music, and I worked on my 8-track but got distracted by other projects. The project was pushed to the back-burner, and the album wasn’t finished and mixed until 1992. Quite honestly, I only have the vaguest memory of working on it in my The Lush Garden studio in Los Angeles. I remember that even a few weeks after I finished a piece, it was hard for me to tell which parts I played and which parts were Dirk. Aside from the low cello sound on my eMax, and the very slight vocals on the one track, who played what is a blur. That’s cool. It’s a great ambient blend."

www.kickstarter.com/projects/samrosenthal/349961652?ref=91039j