We found a pre-album live performance of “Sound of Waves” Live at ProjektFest 1997 that we just had to include on the 25th anniversary reissue of our 1998 album ‘Flux.’ This video features more goodies from the LSD archives. We found proof sheets of photos taken of Ryan and Suzanne performing at The Vic in Chicago the very night of this recording. The photographers are Katie McIntree and E. Katie Holmes.
Stream the ‘Flux Deluxe Edition’ playlist on YouTube: • Flux (Deluxe Edition)
Sam of Projekt asked us to help promote the upcoming Projektfest 2010. Apparently some fans were asking for us — and Melodyguild — to be included via the Projekfest Poll. While we appreciate the kind gesture, we hope you understand that we are not able to perform. It sounds like Sam has a lot of interesting things planned, though, and we’ve certainly had some entertaining times at past Projektfests. Philly is a cool town, too, so definitely check it out if you have the chance to attend!
Cool. The Chicago Tribune published a story promoting the upcoming Projekt Festival happening at the Vic Theatre.
Step aside, Ajax and Minty Fresh. Make some room.
This Tuesday and Wednesday nights, Chicago experiences “From Across this Gray Land,” the first festival celebrating artists on the Projekt label.
The what?
It seems that while our town has been aggressively slamming and bumping to a cavalcade of local label bands at Lounge Ax and the Double Door, Sam Rosenthal and his Projekt artists quietly stole into town and set up shop.
And quietly is the operative word here.
Projekt artists — including Rosenthal’s group, Black Tape for a Blue Girl — are deeply immersed in something that could only be called dark music: ambient, gothic and ethereal. It’s lush, dense and often gloomy. Unlike most trendy ambient music, Projekt’s ambient records feature vocals; there is virtually nothing to dance to; it swirls and envelopes with an unabashed romanticism. Compared with most of the noise in town, Projekt practically whispers.
Rosenthal, 30, started Projekt back in 1983 but it didn’t get moving until three years later, when he moved to California from his native Ft. Lauderdale. Feeling alienated and depressed, he recorded “The Rope,” which he describes as “a combo of techno pop and ambient, somewhere between Gary Neuman and Eno.”
“The Rope” was promptly strangled by the critics, although Rosenthal developed a small core of followers. “At the time, it really upset me,” he confesses. “Now I just kind of laugh. Now I realize a lot of pseudo-intellectual rock critics don’t want to deal with what they think is sappy romantic crap.”
So Rosenthal persevered: With Black Tape for a Blue Girl, he released “Mesmerized by the Sirens” in 1987, “Ashes in the Brittle Air” in 1989, “Chaos of Desire” in 1993, “This Lush Garden Within” in 1994; this year has produced “Remnants of a Deeper Purity.”
But is anyone buying this except Rosenthal and his mother?
Rosenthal laughs again. “We sell all around the world,” he explains. “We sell in Asia and Europe. We’re in Borders.”
Projekt’s best-selling band, Love Spirals Downward, sells about 10,000 CDs per release. Black Tape for a Blue Girl sells about 9,000. Located near Chinatown, Projekt is Rosenthal’s full-time job and obsession. The label employs eight people.
The Projekt Festival, the first of its kind for the label, will feature a buffet of bands, but Rosenthal’s honest about how scary it is for him.
“We’ve got fans coming from Hong Kong and England,” he says. “It just seemed like a good thing to do, to meet the people who like the music. But Black Tape has been a studio band for 10 years. It’s never been possible to play live — so we’ve never done it before.”
This is Ryan again with a little update of what’s going on with us. Our first new music to be released in over a year and a half will be the cd-single Sideways Forest. It is a three songs disc: “Sideways Forest” (the mix that will be on our new album), a trippy groovy remix/re-worked mix of “Sideways Forest” and “Amarillo” – which will not be on the new album. This is set to come out in late June or early July. Our new full length album (still not titled) will follow in September.
We are looking forward to our next live performance at the Projekt Festival at which we’ll be playing two or three new songs in our still all-acoustic set. This will be our first show in Chicago, which was skipped between our West Coast and East Coast tours last year. It should be a lot of fun and please come see us (along with Lycia, lovesliescrushing, and Thanatos on our night) if you are from the area, since we have no plans to be playing there again anytime soon.
Also, if anybody read the Projekt news on the Projekt web, Sam commented on how he thought I wanted to move to Mexico City, as a few people have asked me about. No, I do not want to move there (and no, we were not treated like big rock stars as Sam described). I did say to him that I would like to make more visits there, in the spirit of my Beat heroes like Kerouac, which I plan to do this summer after the Chicago show for a few weeks and visit friends and eat non-stop.
