My tape is haunted

pEACEFANG & Felsenmeer - Dracula Songs
Tea First Records

I adore the spectacle of cassettes as much as the music. pEACEFANG & Felsenmeer's Dracula Songs is issued on a blood-red tape. A picture on the cassette's cover evokes the Rolling Stones' famous tongue and lips logo, only this image has blood-drenched fangs.

At various points, Dracula Songs is reminiscent of Boards of Canada, particularly how it conflates conventional and electronic instrumentation. But this is a bit more adventurous and on occasion, the adventuring takes the listener into some sinister territory. Like the drone piece on Side A, which is stark in its directness, and concerned with neither depth nor velocity. Singles notes play for what seems like an eternity, putting you into a somnambulistic trance, bringing your brain to the edge of completely shutting down. On the second side, there is a track that features howling wolves and a woman sobbing, and the sound you often hear in a horror movie when a ghostly apparition vanishes into thin air. At this point, my tape suddenly shut off, even though it was only halfway through Side B. It took several minutes of wrangling with the cassette and the player to get it to work again. The whole incident unnerved me.

Dracula Songs is more than just audio terror. Side A featured a slice of up-tempo, stripped-down electronica, as well as a track exhibiting a pleasant finger-picked melody on acoustic guitar.