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A LIGHT IS RUNNING ALONG THE ROPES

by SPIRIT RADIO

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  • Limited edition Spirit Bag with CD package
    Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album

    A limited edition Spirit Bag- includes the CD (professionally produced), inside a handcrafted Spirit Bag with a small SR print by Stephen Spera, and a spirit labyrinth poem by Tamalyn Miller on the verso. This signed edition is limited to fifty pieces.

    Includes unlimited streaming of A LIGHT IS RUNNING ALONG THE ROPES via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

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1.
2.
EARTHBOUND 03:00
3.
4.
5.
ELEVEN 01:33
6.
SEA MONK 04:13
7.
8.
ALWAYS 03:39
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10.
11.

about

A Light Is Running Along The Ropes is a the first full-length release by "Chamber Ambient" sound artists SPIRIT RADIO, on Editions Vaché. The New York duo of Stephen Spera and Tamalyn Miller deliver a carefully crafted cycle of alchemical and liminal works, from experimental vocal and text pieces to spatial drones, with Tamalyn’s spectral voice weaving in and out of Stephen’s tapelooped textures and electronic soundscapes.

Spera and Miller have been working in sound and visual arts for most of their lives. Stephen exhibits worldwide and is included in permanent collections including The Museum of Modern Art and The Getty; his recorded works are on labels from Parvoart to Trace, Tesselate, ReRed, and Editions Vaché. Tamalyn’s installations have been seen from Wave Hill to Project Row Houses. She is also a founding member of Brooklyn’s Psych-folk band Goddess. A signature element of her sound kit is a monochord horsehair fiddle of her own construction, which is a feature in SPIRIT RADIO’s aesthetic.
They are at work on new releases, and a few installations and related projects, and will be performing in the New York area soon....
HERE ARE NINE FANTASTIC REVIEWS....

BLUESBUNNY -"WHAT WOULD GHOSTS LISTEN TO ????"
"What would ghosts listen to? It’s a question that not many people will have asked and even fewer will have answered. It is, however, a question that I pondered after listening to “A Light Is Running Along The Ropes” by New York sound artists Spirit Radio.
So, what do ghosts have on their ectoplasmic MP3 players? The answer to that is most likely “Mercury”. The eleventh song is the most fully formed, and almost conventional song on the album and, for its thirteen minute plus length, it develops and achieves completeness even if that very completeness, gloriously, seems less of our reality than of the spirit world. “Mercury” often drifts but never loses sight of its destination and, because of that, seems more akin to the works of modern classical composers like Ligeti or Gárdonyi than either the avant-garde or the ambient genres.
Fans of ambient soundscapes will thus be satisfied by ten of the songs on this album but connoisseurs who would revel in the merging of soundscape and song will be best rewarded by those thirteen glorious minutes that are collectively called “Mercury”. The ghosts are in agreement."
- Bluesbunny, Glasgow 7/3/2018 www.bluesbunny.com/Reviews/ReviewID/2774/xmps/11123.

BEACH SLOTH -Aug 21, 2018
"SPIRIT RADIO SCULPTS AN EXQUISITE REPLICA OF THE INFINITE on the ethereal “A Light Is Running Along The Ropes”. Experimentation with a luscious emotional core, the pieces radiate a mantra-like sense of calm. They take their time in establishing atmosphere and mood while the cyclical approach feels rather unique. Blending drone, folk music, even elements of post-rock with a mystical hue, the whole piece comes into great bloom. Besides the seemingly endless stream of consciousness arrangements there are the vocals, a bit of pure poetry which appear to float on up into the sky.
 Neatly opening the album is the elongated scope of “A light is running along the ropes_copper”. From there they go into a fine sense of happiness with the lovely “EARTHBOUND”. Deeper into the hazy dazed approach the industrial-tinged “SOMETHING ABOUT FIRE” feels quite visceral. While fleeting, “ELEVEN” seems deftly balanced, offering ghostly lo-fi transmissions along a woozy, just out of focus piano that adds further disorientation into the work. Textures becomes extraordinarily important on the soothing “SEA MONK” whose entire arrangement has a sort of nautical quality to it. A long-lost ritual emerges on the album highlight, the gorgeous “A light is running along the ropes: silver” where everything comes together into a perfect stream of consciousness. Calmness runs through the Nice-flavored work of “ALWAYS”. Helping to bring all that came before it together is the crystal clarity of the finale “A light is running along the ropes: mercury”.
 With “A Light Is Running Along The Ropes” Spirit Radio creates something absolutely pristine, a flawless executed piece of art to be truly admired".....beachsloth.com/spiritradio

NY MUSIC DAILY- "In its natural state, it induces all sorts of goosebumps, throwing off layers of sepulchral microtones...."
-New York Music Daily -....full review here-
newyorkmusicdaily.wordpress.com/2018/06/03/spirit/

TONE SHIFT -"Guided by wispy drones, soft crackling hiss and curvaceous vocal shaping this record has an ethereal improvised gloss. " ....read the full review by Tone Shift toneshift.net/2018/03/31/a-light-is-running-along-the-ropes-by-spirit-radio/ .....

TEXTURA- "Spirit Radio turns out to be a perfect choice of name, considering that the recording takes on the character of phantom transmissions reaching our ears through archaic devices of one kind or another. With Miller's ghostly voice and the creak of her horsehair fiddle emerging within the oceanic swirl generated by Spera's tape loops, samples, guitars, and keyboards, the hallucinatory material alternates between hazy dreamscapes and ambient-drone drift...." textura.org/archives/s/spiritradio_lightrunningropes.htm


BADDPRESS-"Just as there is a contrast between electronic and acoustic instruments, SPIRIT RADIO delivers a mixture of quiet sweetness and penetrating, difficult music, writing and vocals. Their ability to fuse all of that into this rich, eminently listenable 58-minute recording is no small accomplishment...."
baddpress.blog/2018/05/03/spirit-radio-a-light-is-running-along-the-ropes/

SUBJECTIVSEN -22-2018/
"The American artist Stephen Spera usually makes himself heard with playful mixes of drones, ambient, neoclassical and many kinds of experimental music. Together with singer Tamalyn Miller he now comes up with their debut “A Light Is Running Along The Ropes” of the ‘Spirit Radio’ project.
They bring to this intriguing sound landscapes, which keep the kaleidoscopic middle between the aforementioned genres. Miller brings her mysterious, ethereal vocals together with her horsehair violin, while Spera performs keyboards, guitar, tapeloops, sitar, mellotron, violin, synthesizer, samples and various other devices. It produces a mysterious and biologic whole that you can firmly take and hold. Organic sounds are nicely interspersed with electronic and remain tangible within extremely abstract pieces. You feel this reality as a complete thing. It sounds almost like a dark joint venture between (the former) His Name Is Alive, Morgen Würde, Maninkari, Natural Snow Buildings and Grouper. All in all, in 57 minutes with 11 tracks, they managed to create a completely overwhelming whole." subjectivisten.nl/het-schaduwkabinet-week-22-2018/

SO WHAT -"Spectral frequencies that spread sinuously  and generate an evocative flow, expanding slowly and always changing. The sound stories of Spirit Radio move between the folds of a suspended and rarefied dimension, a project resulting from the artistic encounter between Tamalyn Miller and Stephen Spera, which initially took the form of the live dimension and now reached its first publication.
 Inspired by the combination of vaporous layers of analogue contrails and synthetic modulations, to which measured acoustic interpolations are added, the work defines a suggestive itinerary through multiform snapshots with a markedly coherent atmosphere. Proceeding between saturated and stagnant expanses of profound reverberations and gloomy textures full of hypnotic reiterations, it is the ethereal vocalism of Miller that traces the path, by shaping itself, from time to time, into the form of an evanescent trace devoid of intelligible content... (“A light is running along the ropes_copper "," The Poisoned Knight "), mesmerizing chant with lulling progression (" Earthbound "," Always ") or emphatic narration that flows from rarefied crackling backdrops (" Something About Fire ").
 The result is an evocative electroacoustic drift with deeply theatrical tones, capable of opening up an evanescent universe in which obscure restlessness and enchanting sweetness come together without any contrast." - SO WHAT - ITALY 6/20/2018
sowhatmusica.wordpress.com/2018/06/20/spirit-radio-a-light-is-running-along-the-ropes/

DRIFTING ALMOST FALLING: "The New York duo of Stephen Spera and Tamalyn Miller deliver a carefully crafted cycle of alchemical and liminal works. The music is a mixture of ambient styles, mystical sounds, music that sounds barely there, fragile at times and at others, transmissions from the other side. The music moves from ghostly spectres to folk tones, post rock touches and torch song singing. There is a sound art feel to the album that is more akin to creating an overall feeling that varies from track to track, rather than a collection of songs. This is occasional music for late night, candles and howling winds…"
driftingalmostfalling.wordpress.com/2019/01/30/the-catch-up-looking-further-back-to-2018-3

credits

released January 22, 2018

Tamalyn Miller: vocals, horsehair fiddle
Stephen Spera : Keyboards, guitars, tape loops, samples,
sitar, mellotron, Roland MC-505, violin, devices, texts, design.
Produced and Mastered by Spera at Studio Vaché, New York.

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SPIRIT RADIO New York, New York

SPIRIT RADIO is Stephen Spera and Tamalyn Miller.

Both Spera and Miller are sound and visual artists, with shows and installations worldwide
to their credit. Tamalyn also plays her handmade horsehair fiddle and sings with New York's Goddess. Spera has had many releases,
on labels like Parvoart, Trace recordings, Tessellate, ReRed, and Editions Vaché…. they
live and work in New York City.
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