Some record labels are defined by a genre. Erased Tapes is defined by a feeling. Its catalog runs from felt-muffled solo piano to chamber drones, acoustic trance and widescreen electronic music, and yet a record with its name on the spine tends to sound like it belongs on the same shelf as the others. If you have ever drifted from ambient music toward modern classical, or the other way around, this is the label that sits right in the middle.
Here is a short history of Erased Tapes and eight albums that make a good first listen.
A short history of Erased Tapes
Erased Tapes was founded in 2007 by Robert Raths, who also records as ghostworker. The label describes itself as a truly independent record label based in London, one that has nurtured genre-defying artists from all around the world without losing its avant-garde ethos.
The label marked its 10th anniversary on February 5, 2017, by opening a new home in East London along with the Erased Tapes Sound Gallery, a space for fans and the public. For its 15th anniversary in 2022, it staged sold-out festivals at Printworks in London and Betonhalle in Berlin, followed by shows at the National Concert Hall in Dublin and the Paris Philharmonic in 2023.
Raths also has a hand in how the records look. The cover of The Imperfect Sea, for example, was designed by Torsten Posselt at the studio FELD under his art direction.
8 essential Erased Tapes albums
1. Ólafur Arnalds: ...And They Have Escaped the Weight of Darkness (2010)
Ólafur Arnalds grew up in Mosfellsbær, a small town outside Reykjavík, and his second full-length album is where his sound opened up. Released in May 2010, it was co-produced with Barði Jóhannsson and adds drums, guitars, voice, Rhodes piano and subtle synthesizers to his piano and strings, with Tony Levin on bass. The theme, Arnalds has said, is that there is always light after darkness. Several pieces were written on tour, and the first half of one track began life at a sound check in Munich. Start here if you like your neoclassical music warm rather than bleak.
2. Nils Frahm: Felt (2011)
Nils Frahm made Felt late at night in his Berlin studio. To keep the peace with his neighbors, he laid thick felt in front of his piano strings and played with very gentle fingers, then discovered he loved how the damped piano sounded. He placed the microphones so deep inside the instrument that they almost touched the strings. You can hear his breathing, the scrape of the piano action and the creak of the wooden floor, all as loud as the notes. It is one of the most intimate piano records you will ever put on headphones.
3. Lubomyr Melnyk: Corollaries (2013)
Ukrainian pianist Lubomyr Melnyk is the pioneer of Continuous Piano Music. Corollaries, released in April 2013, was his first record for Erased Tapes. Peter Broderick recorded and produced it with help from Nils Frahm and Martyn Heyne, who add a delicate layer of sound around the piano. The opening piece, Pockets of Light, runs 19 minutes and is the best way in. A 10th anniversary edition arrived in 2023 with three bonus tracks.
4. Nils Frahm: Spaces (2013)
Frahm's heart lies in improvisation, and Spaces is the record that finally captured his concerts. It was recorded over two years in different locations on everything from old portable reel-to-reel machines to cassette decks, then pieced together at his Durton Studio. Frahm thinks of it as a collage of field recordings more than a live album. He kept the coughs and ringing phones, and on one track he hits the piano strings with a toilet brush to get a dub-like sound. If Felt is the quiet room, Spaces is the packed hall.
5. A Winged Victory for the Sullen: Atomos (2014)
A Winged Victory for the Sullen pairs the ambient guitar drones of Adam Bryanbaum Wiltzie, a member of Stars of the Lid, with the sparse piano of composer Dustin O'Halloran. After their self-titled debut in 2011, choreographer Wayne McGregor, founder of Random Dance and resident choreographer at the Royal Ballet, asked them to score a new work. They recorded more than an hour of music over four months in the summer of 2013 in studios in Brussels, Berlin and Reykjavík with engineer Francesco Donadello, and it became their second album. Atomos keeps their piano, strings and drones and adds electronics, harp and modular synthesizers.
6. Kiasmos: Kiasmos (2014)
Kiasmos is Ólafur Arnalds with Janus Rasmussen, and their self-titled debut lands between Arnalds's piano music and Rasmussen's synth-heavy electro pop. The project had existed since 2009, but the pair finally cleared their schedules in 2014 to make a full album in Arnalds's new studio in Reykjavík. They mixed synthesizers, drum machines and tape delays with a live drummer, a string quartet and grand piano. Listen closely and you can hear a thumb piano, finger snaps and the grind of a lighter wheel standing in for electronic hi-hats. It works as well on a quiet evening as it does in a club.
7. Penguin Cafe: The Imperfect Sea (2017)
Arthur Jeffes started Penguin Cafe in 2009 as a continuation of, and homage to, his late father Simon Jeffes's Penguin Cafe Orchestra. The Imperfect Sea, the band's first album for Erased Tapes, takes its title from his father's saying that we wade in a sea of imperfections. Jeffes wanted it to feel familiar to people who mostly listen to dance records, so he swapped electronic layers for real instruments: string sections instead of pads, heavily effected pianos instead of synths and real feedback loops instead of analog drones. Alongside his own pieces are covers of Simian Mobile Disco and Kraftwerk and a new take on his father's Now Nothing.
8. Rival Consoles: Persona (2018)
Rival Consoles is the London producer Ryan Lee West, and Persona is the best entry point to his electronic side of the label. Released in April 2018, it takes its title from Ingmar Bergman's film Persona, specifically a shot in the opening credits of a child reaching out to touch a shifting face on a screen. The album explores the gap between how we see ourselves and how others see us. West recorded it in his south-east London studio, combining analog synthesizers with acoustic and electric instruments and a deep love of effect pedals. The result swings from snapping, delayed drums to slow, beatless drifts.
Where to go next
Once those eight have settled in, two more records show how wide the label's taste runs. Dysnomia by Dawn of Midi is a Brooklyn piano, bass and drums trio playing hand-looped acoustic minimalism so tightly that it sounds electronic, built on rhythmic ideas from North and West African folk traditions and recorded to 2-inch tape in Hudson, New York. Aura by the Japanese voice artist Hatis Noit, released in June 2022, was made almost entirely with her voice alone.
How to start listening
- For quiet piano: start with Felt, then Corollaries.
- For ambient and drone: go to Atomos.
- For electronic music with a pulse: try Kiasmos, then Persona.
- For something playful: The Imperfect Sea.
Erased Tapes sells its records directly through its own online store, which is the best place to buy if you want to support the label and its artists.
For more slow, spacious records, see our ambient music starter guide, our guide to Kranky Records and our post-rock starter guide. If you want the beat-driven side of British independent music, our Warp Records guide is next. More labels live in our electronic music labels hub.
