Milieu cover

Milieu

Released

 Tape are a Swedish trio – brothers Johan and Andreas Berthling, with friend Tomas Hallonsten – who came together in the early noughties. Their modus operandi is small-scale compositions that are sufficiently open to admit improvisation, when it suits, and the material is built from a complex of acoustic instrumentation, field recordings, and electronics. Milieu was their second album; on it, you can hear laments that pull from folk and post-rock (the lovely opener, “Oak Player”), spiralling guitar-and-electronics duets (the following “Sponge Chorus”), and open-ended suites that recall Talk Talk’s later period. There were a number of artists exploring similar terrain around this time – Mountains, Minamo, Town & Country – Tape stood out for the pop poetics concealed within the scrum of abstraction.

Jon Dale

Recommended by

Suggestions
Significant Soil cover

Significant Soil

Mister Water Wet
Samtvogel cover

Samtvogel

Günter Schickert
New Lands cover

New Lands

Flying Saucer Attack
Sleeps With the Fishes cover

Sleeps With the Fishes

Michael Brook, Pieter Nooten
Fallen Camellias cover

Fallen Camellias

Painting Petals on Planet Ghost
Sometime Today cover

Sometime Today

Darren Tate, Paul Bradley