Scraps of Tape “This is a Copy is This a Copy” CD

And yes, the great Avi from It's a Trap! has struck again, hitting me up with another amazing CD from an excellent Swedish act in the form of "This is a Copy is This a Copy"—the sophomore full-length from Scraps of Tape on Tender Version. This one's loaded up with 10 tracks and nearly an hour's worth of what seems oft-deemed "post-rock", which in this case amounts to largely instrumental compositions that fuse soft 'n' somber yet beautiful melodies with gritty, pulsing throbs of heaviness. A crisp, warm recording allots plenty of breathing room for each individual piece of the puzzle, making for an engaging listen that's both rocked out and memorable and emotionally gutwrenching depending on the various twists and turns that the compositions undergo in the process. Ringing clean guitars and swirling effects; dingy basslines thudding away in the distance; crashing, distorted power chords; and fucking powerful, at times almost frantic drumming... it's all gold. And then there are the soft, sparse appearances of vocals, or even unexpected accents of horns, violin, piano, etc. in a few areas throughout the album. There are even some loosely experimental elements that are more textural than anything—"noisy" without being all that abrasive per se, though at times things can get rather aesthetically intense and aggressive. The disc is handsomely packaged in a matte six-panel digipack to boot—with not one but two booklets: One a full-color six-panel foldout covered on both sides with collaged photos of the band, the other an eight-page, stapled affair that matches the visuals of the digipack and includes brief snippets of lyrics. Great, great stuff. I'm all over this shit, I love it.

Too many hands have tugged at my throat. All of these clouds and years. Mile after mile. Bearing down on me. How your heart gets thrown. How good it feels to turn my back on you. All of your clouds and fears. Line after line. Folding in on you. How your heart gets worn.

This gem's not out until February 20th, but you can pre-order it now—so buy it, buy it, buy it, just fucking buy it:

It's a Trap!