As a surprise release for Erased Tapes founder Robert Raths, label buddies Ólafur Arnalds and Nils Frahm have collaborated for the first time ever. The pair have recorded an EP of ambient electroacoustic works called Stare. The release also features Anne Müller on cello with artwork by label-friend and in-house designer Torsten Posselt.
What started as a jam on old analogue synths at Nils’ Durton studio in Berlin, continued with a 4-day session at Óli´s E7 studio in Reykjavik. Ólafur explains, “the album became kind of an Iceland vs. Berlin thing. I think you can hear it very well in the sound (side a vs. side b) and that is the most interesting thing about this record for me: that subtle but significant different in the characteristics of the music two people made in Iceland against what the same two people made in Germany.” The project was kept secret until, “delivered the fully mastered record with finished artwork to Robert around the 5th anniversary of the label.”
‘a2’ is minimal and glacial. Like the EP artwork, it’s hazy … but precisely so.
There will be limited availability of Stare on Record Store Day 2012, April 21st, which just happens to coincide with the fifth anniversary of Erased Tapes - pre-order here.

For the moments when youre truly helpless, you need something to make you feel as if there are worse things. During those moments, you need something to remind you that its silently miraculous that youre even able to be helpless. Its a damned miracle that blood pumps and you move, can be moved, can move others. Its a damned miracle that were filled with a bottomless jug of emotions that we can tap into and see what theyll do to us, what theyll arrange or rearrange. Were amazingly outfitted with a thousand chirping birds in our ribs that let themselves be known, that let out their peeps in chattered fits and then coast away with the day and its movable light. Whatever we find ourselves in, at any time, is merely a flirtation. It might drag on us and it might throw us into the brambles, but we must give ourselves over to something that will remind us that it is all just a flirtation - any and all of it.
The music of Olafur Arnalds is capable of reminding us of the nuances and the delicate awnings of our lives that we carelessly desensitize ourselves to. His lovingly orchestrated compositions are not what you would think of as uplifting in a defining sense, but they get you to a place where you are feeling things intensely and anytime youre able to stave off the numbness, youre doing something better than most. Youre feeling something and that should give you a reason enough to rejoice. These are suspended stories of hardship and beauty - never
knowing which one gets to eat and entertain that day. It could just be a little of both. He takes out into days that cook up good winds - winds that whip at the flap of the flags hung out to dry and winds that allow cars and some of those aforementioned birds make better time.
We listen to the notes and the melodies that Arnalds puts together and they leave us where we are, feeling like were watching our hat blow away. It was just lifted from the top of our head, by a substantial gust, and by the time we realized it, there is was a quarter of a mile away and rising, carried off to a death. We watch it as it goes and marvel at its good fortune, for a ride like that is a hell of a way to go.