Your One Wish: A Brief Review Of The Reissue Of As One Aflame Laid Bare By Desire By Black Tape For A Blue Girl

In those pre-internet days, one had to rely on word of mouth, or maybe a cool record store employee to find something awesome that might have flown under your personal radar. The British music press, and American zines helped too. For me, coming off of working at a couple of cool record stores, and thoroughly obsessed with releases on 4AD, I naturally gravitated to anything that looked like it might sound the same.

I can't remember the first Projekt release I purchased, but I'm pretty sure it must have been an album from Black Tape for a Blue Girl. I can remember that Tower Records seemed to put these releases in with the imports, even though the imprint was an American independent label, and maybe in my quest to find something from 4AD, that's how I stumbled upon this band 30 years ago. The artwork and song titles certainly seemed to suggest the same vibe as the Ivo-signed groups I was already in thrall to.

The Projekt label is still going strong and has just reissued one of the best albums from the band, As One Aflame Laid Bare By Desire. This 1999 album from label boss Sam Rosenthal and crew is a sort of career peak for the collective, and one of those releases that reminds a listener just how rich, varied, and complex the material on the imprint was. (It still is, obviously, as the label is still releasing music in a similar vein.)

The music here is certainly darkwave -- a term that might have originated because of this label -- but it's also more expansive still. From the emotive Marc Almond-ish "Tell Me You've Taken Another" to the classical stylings of the three parts of "Given", this remains ambitious music. One can certainly trace parts of this back to the first two This Mortal Coil records, or formative releases from Dead Can Dance -- "The Green Box" sounds very much like the instrumentals on Within the Realm of a Dying Sun (1987), and I mean that as high praise -- but Sam Rosenthal is pursuing a personal muse here that set this entirely apart from amy American peers in the Nineties. From the aching intimacy of "Your One Wish" to the undulating and spacious "Dulcinea", the tunes here have a windswept lushness that pleasantly surprises still; I can play this now and remember why I liked this band so much when I was a younger person. And, having had decades of further listening to a wide range of stuff, I can hear now how adept Rosenthal and crew were at drawing in disparate pieces of inspiration to create this vision of a record. It's hardly just an American spin on 4AD.

This 2025 edition of As One Aflame Laid Bare By Desire features the new remaster of the 1999 record, demos and backing tracks and takes, and a much longer demo version of "The Passage" from the album. There's a wealth of bonus material here, and the assorted bits do more to advance the idea that this was really a peak for the band, with Black Tape for a Blue Girl moving to a broader sound here, without sacrificing the poetic and emotional depths of the earlier records. Black Tape for a Blue Girl always made music that was a bit timeless, and outside of trends, and 26 years later, that is very much appreciated. The charms of As One Aflame Laid Bare Be Desire remain intact, and poetic and emotive sound of this group still manages to stir something borderline profound in a listener.

As One Aflame Laid Bare By Desire by Black Tape for a Blue Girl is out now via Projekt. Details below.