Organ Thing of the Day then, back on the hungry horse and all that, we do try to feed you (and the horse) with a thing of the day every day here, that is the vague plan, we have a ratther refined Thing for you this cold first Thursday of January 2023.

“Tape Runs Out have announced their debut album Floodhead, which will be released by Trapped Animal Records on 31st March 2023″ reads the press release, it isn’t their debut album of course, they released the rather fine, rather warm Ghost Fruit in 2021, an album well worth exploring while you wait. I always had Ghost Fruit as a fine eight track album, maybe they see it as some kind of EP or soemthing, does it really matter. Cambridge band Tape Runs Out have announced a new album, a follow up to 2021’s excellent Ghost Fruit (okay, maybe Floodhead is their debut album proper)

We’re told the new album is “an exploratory sonic journey from the mind of band leader Liam Goodrum-Bell. With its roots in indie-rock but featuring an array of instruments, off-kilter time signatures and experimental track structures, the Cambridge band’s sound has earned comparisons to the likes of Radiohead and Explosions In The Sky.” and that “the album’s first single ‘Souvenir’ is a driving, riff-heavy track that pits infectious vocal melodies against grungy, distorted guitars, with lyrics that “represent the barrage of disparate, intrusive thoughts your brain throws at you when you’re trying to relax”.  Not sure about those comparisons, thy’d rather turn me off, thanksfully we like to listen to the music before we read press releases and while Souvenir might be the sound of Tape Runs Out rocking out (well by their quietly restrained standards), it does sound like they’re picking up in a really positive way, here’s the song and the rather good looking video…

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Liam explains that the video “shot and edited entirely on my phone, was created in one intense week over the festive period where I may have lost my mind a little. Each of the 27 separate scenes in the video represents an average of about 90 minutes planning and crafting, getting everything to look right, trying different arrangements, and then animating.”

Recorded and produced by Liam and guitarist Dan Dawson at Dan’s home studio over the course of a year, Floodhead thrives off experimenting with different textures and sounds, with each song seeking to be its own microcosm of creativity, delivering its unique part within the whole. The painstaking detail and time spent by Liam and Dan between the initial recording session during the summers of 2021 and 2022 takes the listener on a unique journey through the Tape Runs Out universe.

“The main recurring theme throughout the album is being overwhelmed” explains Liam. “I’m guilty of starting shiny new projects before completing previous ones, which leaves me with a trail of unfinished ideas that all jostle for attention in my head. This inability to see things through naturally leads to feelings of failure and self-resentment.

‘Floodhead’ as a title evokes the sense of being overwhelmed with different thoughts and ideas. It also goes into one of the secondary themes from the album, that of being at the whim of nature. As a word it means the wall of water that precedes a flood, which I thought was an apt representation of how it feels in those moments of existential panic.”

Tape Runs Out are Liam Goodrum-Bell (Guitar & Lead Vocal), Dan Dawson (Guitar), Takeshi Kanemoto (Bass) and Laurence Moore (Drums), Clare Myerscough (Violin & keyboard), Ellie Winter (Hammered Dulcimer)

Here’s some links – Facebook / Bandcamp / Spotify

And here’s some rather good session footage from last year

And here’s even more session footage, this time from 2019…