A scant six months after Phil Elverum revived his The Microphones moniker to share the forty-minute, one-track Microphones in 2020, he’s back with an even more unexpected release. Foghorn Tape is an ambient LP out today, and as Elverum explained on Twitter, just because it’s ambient doesn’t mean it’s ambient music.
“ADVERTISEMENT,” Elverum wrote. “New release now available: “Foghorn Tape” by the Microphones.” He said that it’s a “clear vinyl LP of background noise,” which means, “no songs, no music limited edition, no digital option.”
The description on the website is just as succinct, though more revealing. “Literally just the noisy fuzzed out tape loop of a “fog horn” (actually a distant pitch-bent bass) that plays through-out the background of “the Glow pt. 2” and other Microphones musics,” the band wrote. “Ambient noise. Blank ocean.” -Wren Graves / Consequence of Sound