Black Tape For A Blue Girl reissue debut album ‘The Rope’ for its 40th anniversary
Black Tape For A Blue Girl and Projekt Records reissue the 1986 debut album “The Rope” as a limited 40th anniversary 2LP, with a new 2026 mix.
Black Tape For A Blue Girl and Projekt Records reissue “The Rope” on October 2, presenting the 1986 debut album in a limited edition that pairs the original mix, remastered, with a new 2026 mix by Sam Rosenthal for its 40th anniversary. The 2LP edition is limited to 300 copies on 140-gram vinyl, with LP1 pressed on baby blue vinyl with black splatters and LP2 on transparent blue vinyl with white splatters. A 2CD digipak edition adds seven bonus tracks. Both formats are released via Projekt Records.
“The Rope” is Black Tape For A Blue Girl’s debut album, the project Sam Rosenthal built around his songwriting and electronics, with Oscar Herrera on vocals. Each format includes the full 12-track album twice: the original 1986 mix, remastered, and the new 2026 mix. Martin Bowes of Attrition handled the mastering. The 2LP package adds a 16-page lyric and memorabilia fanzine insert plus a sticker; the 2CD edition comes in a 6-panel digipak with a 4-panel photo insert and sticker.
The original 1986 tracklist runs: “memory, uncaring friend”, “hide in yourself”, “within these walls”, “the holy terrors”, “end”, “seven days til sunrise”, “the rope”, “the few remaining threads”, “the lingering flicker”, “slow blur”, “the floor was hard but home” and “we return”. The 2CD edition adds seven bonus tracks exclusive to that format: “the lingering flicker (first draft)”, “within these walls (early mix with clarinet)”, “the holy terrors (long)”, “second dream”, “the lingering flicker (isolated violins)”, “within these walls (short with violins)” and “memory, uncaring friend (remix intro)”.
Sam Rosenthal on writing ‘The Rope’
Rosenthal, who also founded Projekt Records, described the circumstances that produced the album: “In November ’85, following two years of recording instrumental electronic music, I invited Oscar Herrera to sing two songs on my ISLANDS cassette. A few months later in February of ’86 I left Florida for college in Orange, California. I was 20 years old, feeling isolated, lonely, missing friends back home. In my dorm room that spring I used the school’s Fostex 250 4-track cassette portastudio to record songs with my lyrics and melodies. Writing words for Oscar to sing over my ethereal and ambient music helped me explore those angsty and tangled feelings. The Rope is half vocal and half instrumental. It’s all quite minimal, yet it’s an album listeners still mention as a favorite. Capturing the confusion and darkness I felt at that time remains valid; new listeners connect with it today. I never would have expected that 40 years later The Rope would be listened to and appreciated by new generations. It’s really nice knowing those feelings are timeless, and the music has a place in people’s lives.”
Uncut included “The Rope” in its “200 Greatest Goth Albums” feature, describing it as: “The vehicle for the more electronic songwriting of Projekt Records’ founder Sam Rosenthal, brought to life by singer Oscar Herrera’s arch delivery. BTFABG spun a unique thread of ambient darkwave, neoclassical exoticism and dark cabaret on their relatively bare-boned and lo-fi debut album.”
About Black Tape For A Blue Girl
Black Tape For A Blue Girl is the project Sam Rosenthal formed in 1986, built around his own songwriting and electronics and centered from the start on the pairing of his instrumental, ambient compositions with vocalists singing his lyrics. “The Rope”, released that year on Projekt Records, the label Rosenthal founded, introduced Oscar Herrera as vocalist alongside contributions from Allan Kraut, Kim Prior, Adam Buhler, Candy Sherlock and Lara Radford.
The project’s discography continued through “Mesmerized by the Sirens” (1987), “Ashes in the Brittle Air” (1989), “A Chaos of Desire” (1991), “This Lush Garden Within” (1993), “Remnants of a Deeper Purity” (1996), “As One Aflame Laid Bare by Desire” (1999), “The Scavenger Bride” (2002), “Halo Star” (2004), “10 Neurotics” (2009), “Tenderotics” (2013), “These Fleeting Moments” (2016), “To Touch the Milky Way” (2018) and “The Cleft Serpent” (2021). Projekt has revisited several of these titles as anniversary reissues in recent years, including “The Cleft Serpent” and “Ashes in the Brittle Air” on vinyl, “Mesmerized by the Sirens” on vinyl and double CD, and “As One Aflame Laid Bare by Desire” and “Remnants of a Deeper Purity” in their own anniversary editions. Rosenthal has also continued to release music outside the project, including ambient and drone recordings under his own name.
The 40th anniversary edition of “The Rope” extends that reissue campaign to the album that started it, presenting Herrera’s original vocal performances and Rosenthal’s 1986 arrangements alongside his 2026 revisiting of the same material.
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