The Arms Of Someone New put ‘Tape Recordings 1983-1985’ on Bandcamp via Projekt
The Arms Of Someone New have issued “Tape Recordings 1983-1985” through Projekt as a name-your-price digital release on Bandcamp. The 33-track set collects material recorded before the Champaign-Urbana, Illinois duo released “Susan Sleepwalking” in 1985.
The release is split across four parts built around the early cassette-era catalog: “Significant Others”, “Occam’s Razor”, “Notes From Underground”, and a final disc of rarities. The project grew out of recordings Mel Eberle and Steve Jones made in 1983 after Eberle’s work with The First Things, with the pair aiming for a sound that “wrapped around the listener like fog.”
The first four songs came out in December 1983 as the “Significant Others” cassette on Hysterical Records, followed two months later by “Occam’s Razor”. “Notes From Underground” was issued in the US in April 1984 and in Germany via Devils Dandy Dogs, while the rarities section adds early and previously unreleased material including “Illusions”, “Journey of an Exile”, and “Broken Backs”.
This is not the first appearance of the compilation itself. “Tape Recordings 1983-1985” awas already released once in 2016 as a standalone edition limited to 111 copies and another 333 copies included in a Vinyl-On-Demand box.
About The Arms Of Someone New
The Arms Of Someone New formed in 1983 in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, around Mel Eberle and Steve Jones. Eberle and Jones made the recordings while Eberle was also involved with The First Things, a group Jones managed and produced.
They brought a hybrid early-1980s underground sound, mixing alternative/new wave with indie and college-rock roots, built from atmospheric guitars, simple synths, drum machines, tape loops, and a stripped-back, introspective mood. In short they sat somewhere between moody synth-pop, post-punk, minimal synth, jangly indie guitar music, and cassette-era experimentation.
Their earliest releases were the cassettes “Significant Others” in December 1983, “Occam’s Razor” in February 1984, and “Notes From Underground” in April 1984, followed by “The Holy Dance” 7-inch in August 1984 and the “Burying The Carnival” 12-inch in 1985.
In September 1985, the duo self-released “Susan Sleepwalking” on Office Records. Additional players on that album included Lynn Canfield, Henry Frayne, Brenden Gamble, Joe Strell, and Nick Rudd. Later releases included “Love, Power & Justice”, the 1987 cassette “Black & White”, the 1988 album “Promise”, and the later Projekt archive reissue “Every Seventh Wave EP (2014 Remaster)”. In 2025, Projekt issued a remastered digital edition of “Susan Sleepwalking“, and in March 2026 it added the digital edition of “Tape Recordings 1983-1985”.
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