Though our roster is scattered throughout the globe, blue thirteen marks the first activation of our Estonian sleeper cell. This two-man unit consists of Threes and Will and Huerequeque, who collaborate on three of the tracks on this C30, which additionally includes one solo track by each artist.
Noise rock sometimes sounds a little played out to our ears - maybe it's a side-effect to exposure from all the boutique guitar pedals we've been hoarding since 2011 - but there's been some same old-same old out there for a little bit. In truth, Blue Tapes was kind of formed in-part as an escape hatch from that stuff. The self-indulgence. The testosterone.
No more. These two Estonian artists have totally rewired our rock brain - their tones are impossible, their rhythms as necessary as waves. This might be the best the genre has got since IIIrd Gatekeeper-era Skullflower! It's highly individual and seemingly effortless, and the combination of both artists just doubles their (not inconsiderable) firepower.
This isn't just heavy for the sake of heavy - it feels like a new kind of psychedelia. One unreliant on wah-wah and noodlesome solos. It's psychedelic the way a brutalist car park is psychedelic.
praise for blue thirteen:
"While the weight of Blue Tapes’ near-flawless roster to date brings with it hefty anticipation beyond that of any other label, these two easily live up to this. Blue Thirteen is restlessly propelled through an ocean of turbulent fuzz by the pair responsible, taking in near-danceable drum patterns, doom-esque guitar squall, and waves of acidic psych-noodling, all shrouded under a coating of concrete-grey lo-fidelity. The colour-tinted psychedelic touches to Threes and Will & Huerequeque's noise thrust open the doors to the astral plane, like the pained ecstasy of an ancient Chinese torture victim, kept conscious by intravenously adminsistered opium. Unlucky for some? Not by any stretch of the imagination." - The Quietus
"Blues Tapes have been responsible for some of the most audaciously individualistic music to have found its way into my ears in recent years. They’re challenging in the way a bunch of thugs in a narrow alleyway are challenging rather than, say, the way a question on Pointless is. Blue Tapes don’t ask questions: they provide answers. Sometimes those answers are uncomfortable and sometimes they hurt, but they always take you by the throat and don’t permit you to give a moment’s thought to anything else for the length of time you’re experiencing them. This particular question comes from Estonia, and it’s got me in a headlock.
If last year’s extraordinary Katie Gately cassette was their most stunning release yet, their Blue Thirteen release is giving it a serious run for its money. Whereas Gately’s offering succeeded both because of and in spite of its sophistication, Threes & Will and Huerequeque are a totally different proposition, a sledgehammer attack, violent and abrasive yet utterly compelling.
The two bands bring you five venomous, pants-fouling brickbats of noise that will either delight you or, if you can’t appreciate their slabs of sound, make you pay for it. It’s not a release to appreciate the finer points of, because there aren’t any and often it’s better that way; yet, beneath the harsh surface drone are pearls of meticulous soundcraft, bloody and bashed though they are before they get to reach your eardrums." - Louder Than War
"What an extraordinary release. Blue Tapes continues to unleash the most astonishing stuff on the world. One of the releases of the year." - Mark Whitby, Dandelion Radio
"Here’s a track that could once and for all unite the solid state amp fetishists with the kraut-heads. Estonian droners Threes and Will & Huerequeque take the repetitive onslaught and bottomless tone of Earth’s approach, extract the palm-muted metal chug, and set it to an acid soaked, monotonous cantor. The oscillating low-end hum of feedback drifts like magma underneath tectonic crust of the track’s guitar squall. The images of its accompanying video seem especially relevant to this summer’s sense of global turbulence. The video shows polychrome-modified recycled footage ranging from World War II bombings to trench warfare and medieval combat. The cyclical progression of these images juxtaposed on the repeating structure of the song suggest a bleak reflection on the unending human tendency toward violence." - Ad Hoc
For more than 10 years, Blue Tapes has curated a numbered series of releases emphasising different aspects of minimal music -
from grime to gugak, American primitivism to Japanese ambient - presented with appropriately minimal and often abstract cyanotype artwork....more
During the final days of writing my thesis I listened to this album on repeat for hours at a time. It was like being suspended in one eternal moment while all that changed around me were the ripples and eddies of a slowly meandering river. catharina_bee
