Bleep

We’re huge fans of Paper Dollhouse here at Bleep Towers. The London-/Suffolk-based duo have been responsible for some of our favourite records of recent times - indeed, their previous full-length The Sky Looks Different Here was named in our top 10 records of 2018. As such, it’s hugely exciting to be able to present a new cassette from the pair entitled The Walled Garden.

Across thirteen tracks here Paper Dollhouse take us on a journey into a world of dubwise electronics, hallucinatory home recordings, astral ambiences and post-trance synthesis. The record opens with ‘We Walked Through The Woods Holding Hands’, a grainy home-taping. Several similar vignettes punctuate the record, with the original recordings accompanied by delay (‘Say Something’), humming keyboards (‘This Is Not The End’) and various other sounds. These tracks set the scene very well for the rest of the record, welcoming the listener into Paper Dollhouse’s lucid dream state.

While there is a strong uniform aesthetic to The Walled Garden, Paper Dollhouse cover a lot of stylistic ground here. With its buzzing bass and half-heard vocals ‘Emerald’ sits somewhere between Grouper and Hype Williams; the latter artist is recalled even more strongly by the potent haze of ‘It’s Raining, Everything Is OK’; there is a bit of Caterina Barbieri to the choppy synths on ‘Strange Awakening, Pulling Towards The Sun’ and ‘Time Circle’; ‘Flowers Through Stone Private’ is an abrasive, humming piece of musique concrete.

Paper Dollhouse’s vivid electronics continue to impress on new full-length The Walled Garden.