Music Review: Projekt Afar Free Compilation.

Projekt Afar is a free compilation available on-line that’s been on Amazon since 2010 I believe. Projekt records has been around forever. It was created by Sam Rosenthal of Black Tape for Blue Girl to release his own work in the late 80’s originally. It’s generally associated with soft and atmospheric gothic music, although they’ve put other things, a controlled bleeding album if I recall. During the 2000’s I was friends with Patrick Ogle of the Projekt band Thanatos. That stopped when he interviewed the washed-up grunge band Silverchair from the 90’s. At that point I still held hopes to make a living through my fiction, and all the press was going to little indie rock bands, and when people interview rocker assholes like Silverchair that just encourages the magazine industry to go with the worthless indie rockers. I know that he was doing what he did to make a living, but it was clear that he didn’t see the larger fall-out or cared about quality control.
I bet though if I looked it up, Patrick probably at least released puts out some relatively decent music. The Black Tape for a Blue Girl track on Afar is extremely weak. Probably the worst performance I’ve ever seen live by a band was Revue Noir, which was a project by Sam Rosenthal with some not very attractive goth chick singing, an attempt to conform to the Dresden Dolls popularity at the time. Actually, the Dresden Dolls, looking back on it now, were always wretched. Amanda Palmer comes off as a spoiled little theatre major type, she’s not sexy on account of the unshaved armpits. Revue Noir was a guy who’d done goth albums in the 80’s and 90’s trying to adapt to the trend of the Dresden Dolls and bands of that ilk as the trend was on it’s way out. The track from Black Tape for Blue Girl on Afar sound like Revue Noir, unfortunately.
The gothic music, goth, doesn’t have the same magic it had for me in high school or college. I think in my 20’s I was in denial that it was slipping away, that I’d got sick of it. The band that stands out as the one that still holds is Joy Division really In the case of Projekt records, being friends with Patrick during the 2000’s offered insights into the music, but a lot of that was unflattering insight. I learned that these bands hadn’t sold nearly as well as I would have thought, for example. That being said, some of the tracks on this album are more embarrassing then others. There’s a two artists on here that are not doing anything radically new but have retained the way they sounded in the90’s more or less, Lovesliescrushing and Steve Roach. I think Steve Roach was waiting for a check to do instrumental work from Hollywood that never really came.
Then there is the track Call of The Devine by Mark Seelig that goes straight for being the music playing in the background at a New Age bookstore. This collection is free. I suppose it would be unobtrusive music for a dinner party or something like that, the Black Tape for a Blue Girl track on there would have to be skipped over, that is actively irritating.