blue fifty-five: Pedro Oliveira & Morgan Sully

Sometimes nothing really claws at the heartstrings like the sound of an amplified guitar.

As a label, Blue Tapes has released music made on almost every conceivable instrument – gayageum, glockenspiel, koto, swarmandal, Dubreq Pianomate, a sawed crucifix, waterphone, banjo, autoharp, melodica, accordion and kargyraa vocals have all meshed and clashed with an armoury of electronic and more traditional sounds across our catalogue.

All beautiful, all perfect in their own delivery for those pieces. But there’s something about the raw, exposed sound of an electric guitar that remains evocative and compelling, even though it may be the most exhaustively explored instrument of the last century.

blue fifty-five: Pedro Oliveira & Morgan Sully is a duet between baritone and standard electric guitar, with minimal applications of synth, that recalls the abyssal six-string wanderings of adventurers from Neil Young to Dylan Carlson, Sunn O))) to Bill Orcutt.

Recorded live “over two gloomy winter afternoons”, these five improvised pieces will warm the souls of fans of Blue Tapes released from Abysmal Growls of Despair, Tashi Dorji, and Brian John McCrearty.

They’re not so much songs that are played by Pedro and Morgan, as much as fuzz, rust and roar wrung from the ghosts who live in valves and strings.