Tag Archives: Memory Tapes

Concert Review: Memory Tapes (live at Johnny Brenda's)

–Jake Sanders

Seeing Memory Tapes play at Johnny Brenda’s this past Wednesday reminded me that hearing a band or musician play live can be such a unique experience from hearing them on record. As a concert goer, you expect a musician’s songs to be changed at least a bit in the live performance, or at the very least you expect to see how they’re played.  This seems especially true with electronic music. At a show you see how the musician innovates on the sound immediately with mixers and turntables rather than from studio overdubs. This could have been the method that Memory Tapes’ Dayve Hawke employed, but instead he played guitar with a bassist and drummer, which is interesting given that he records and produces all the music on his albums himself. I thought this might be just an arbitrary choice before the show, but the band was so strong and cohesive that it made the songs all the more enjoyable.

After goth-synth Philadelphia band Instamatic and a short DJ set, two screens descended from the ceiling onto which were projected kaleidoscopic images. While Hawk and the band set up, the DJ spun a prolonged note that resonated for a bit too long, inciting a curt “Yo dude. Where’s the spaceship landing?” from Hawk. I got to chuckle a bit before they broke into an impressive version of “Yes I Know” from Player Piano, which sounds downbeat on record but came across radiant and much more expressive with the three playing together live. Right off the bat, anyone could hear how strong and collected the band sounded, and how well they played off each other.  They kept the flow going with loud, big versions of “Wait in the Dark” and “Offers”.  Everything about the music was confrontational and right up front, including Hawk’s voice, which shot through the speakers as loud as anything else (a big difference from his vocals and the instruments on record). They played two I didn’t recognize, then “This is Our Life” and “Trance Sisters,” which amplified the desperation and disaster of the song, rendering it all the more cataclysmic. They closed with a slow-building version of (their now-classic?) “Bicycle,” which turned into a bombastic dance number that got the whole crowd groovin’.

In short, I liked the record a lot, but the show totally sold me on how good Memory Tapes is. Hawk is a special kind of musician because he does all the writing himself, but it really made such a difference to hear everything played together. The already excellent melodies became fire and electricity with the group’s performance, and I think that might be just the result of the cooperation (or competition) natural between musicians. It’s a credit to Hawke that he can do both—play everything together and make a show that powerful. This isn’t to say that live music is always superior to music on record, but I think it showcases a different type of musical skill. Hawk constructs and records memorable melodies demonstrating his skill as a composer. However, he can also translate that into the kind of performance that shocks, which certainly places him as a forerunner in the category of “artists to watch.”

Album Review: Memory Tapes' Player Piano

Album Review by Jake Sanders

Player Piano, the second release from home-based electronic recording artist Memory Tapes, is a very welcome continuation of the gentle pop-electronica that the sole musician Dayve Hawk crafted in 2009’s Seek Magic.  Like the last album, this one is rich with clear pop-melodies that jump playfully around, constructing a sound that’s both melancholy and charming, and both old and new.  Hawk himself describes the music on the album as ‘keyboard-based psychedelic girl group songs, a sort of motown suicide note’. If that sort of description eludes you, I doubt you’re alone in that.  There is something elusive about the sound on this album, partly because it does seem like a throwback, but one that still keeps the novelty of chill-wave.  What eludes me on this album is the conflict beneath the surface, like with the pleasant synth sounds and high-pitched vocals that pull in a sunnier direction, but with lyrics that explore much more stressful that don’t seem to fit with the airiness of the music, including painful relationships and the inability to mend them.  But I think its real success lies in Hawk’s ability to organize the different moods together flawlessly on each song, to make it all seem nonchalant and easy.

“Wait in the Dark” introduces the layers of synth-noise, clean bass and real percussion present on the rest of the album.  It’s hard to deny the sadness of this one, though it still has an upbeat rhythm and a mobile instrumentation that implies cheeriness.  “Today is Our Life” and “Yes I Know” sound like the music could delve into the sadness that‘s implied, but they end up sounding as pleasant and nonchalant as the others.  Hawk has said himself about his recording style that “the music is my better nature, and the lyrics are me shouting myself down with self-loathing and cynicism. You end up somewhere between a genuine smile you’re trying to hold back, and a false smile you put on for a show.”  That’s a really good description of the double-life of this record, or on a lot of chill-wave for that matter.  The music is so well packaged and planned that it doesn’t cross the boundary that separates “chill” from anything else, but often it does imply something heavier, like in the lyrics.  In a song like “Sun Hits,” there’s not even an attempt at getting at any other mood: it’s all candy.  But with the last five tracks, Hawk does pull forward at the darker stuff in the music, with “Fell Thru Ice” and “Trance Sisters.”  I was glad to hear the cataclysm and the desperation of the synths on these tracks, partly because it seemed like that’s what he was trying to get to the whole record, and partly because it shows that he’s capable of breaking those boundaries for himself.

All in all, this is a great second album in itself and for the interesting questions about recording that it inspires.  One of the interesting things about the music is that Hawk records it all himself with live instruments, without a sequencer to help him.  However, on this summer’s tour, he has been playing with two other musicians in a guitar-bass-drum set-up.  This Wednesday, he’ll be playing at Johnny Brenda’s in Philadelphia, and I’m looking forward to seeing how it’ll translate live.  I’ll be writing a review of the show later this week, so stay tuned!

Memory Tapes will be playing in Philadelphia at Johnny Brenda’s. Doors open at 8PM.