Memory Tapes - Seek Magic

"Stop Talking" is the fucking jam of all time. It's one of those songs that sounds like 4 different choruses, bouncing back and forth from one to the other. One of them just sounds like straight up italo disco, not a revival or impersonation, it just sounds like you found it in the racks and it's a secret gem.

― The World's Biggest Christ (Z S), Thursday, 8 October 2009 03:22 (3 weeks ago) Bookmark

"Stop Talking" so so great on so many levels!

Graphics just blew my tiny mynd.

Stop Talking > Graphics > Bicycle > Green Knight > Plain Material bringing lots of joy to me this summer/autumn

Seriously, Ducktails + Memory Tapes + Memory Cassette + Taken By Trees + "For My Girls" and etc etc = the dreamwave/chillwave revolution 2009.

Stop Talking. wow. I just listened to it again and just... wow.

Memory Tapes brand of nostalgic chill has a much broader appeal than Ducktails' I think. Ducktails' washed-out, overexposed, stoned chill is way more indie than Memory Tapes' shiny, spacious, extroverted and, yeah, bouncy, chill. But they have both been good summer/autumn jams regardless.

Thing is, Memory Tapes isn't really *that* chilled. Which is why I like it a lot better than those "I own a laptop and some Slowdive rereleases" type artists. It's incredibly *bouncey* for nu-gaze.

Oh god, Ducktails is just awful. No no no. It's that "let's make things DELIBERATELY A BIT SHIT" aesthetic that really makes me want to rip mine own eardrums out.

Memory Tapes, apart from being really woozy and textural and sonically all over the place - he still manages to make his music sound somehow *polished* - not in a fake, shiny way, but in a velvety smooth sort of way that makes you want to pick it up and rub your cheek against it.

If you did that with Ducktails, you'd get splinters.

Haha, Memory Tapes are definitely much more polished & have little kid with a radio infectious enthusiasm, but there's a slightly fragile woozy feel to some of the Ducktails stuff that I dig.

or,

the difference is weed

Ha ha, that might be it. I don't have the right brain chemistry for weed.

side topic: if I don't have the brain chemistry to handle weed, why is so much of the music I like such stoner type music? I suppose that I love something about that quality of music - but I like the stuff that bears up when not under the influence.

But then again, this whole genre is so hit and miss for me. I feel like I should completely love it, like it's pitched right at me. But then I'll hear something which by all descriptions I should love (Washed Out, Nite Jewel, all that stuff) and my reaction is kind of "meh" rather than "THIS WAS MADE FOR ME" which I get with Memory Tapes.

I like a lot of stoner stuff too but do very little listening high, it's an ethos w/some shit manifestations like anything else.

Perhaps it's just jealousy that so much of this genre just sounds like the 4-track tapes my sisX0r and I used to make back in the 80s.

you and zs both claiming to have come close to this sound, will anyone actually back up their extravagant boasts with brute mp3 fact?

funnily enough, I just had some of those songs out coz my sisX0r was visiting. I will see if I can find any.

(that said, considering that some of my sisX0r's 4-track tapes made it onto the 2nd and 3rd HNIA albums, perhaps you could just listen to those in the meanwhile to get an idea of the kind of things she/we were doing.)

((and this is more in response to the Nite Jewel type stuff than actually Memory Tapes, who are far more polished than anything we ever did. Not helped by the fact that NJ is actually holding the exact drum machine we used to record with in one of her promo photos - so the sound similarities may be down to using the same technology.))

wow this stuff is gorgeous. must preorder that vinyl.

fuckin a!

Plain Material is easily my favorite on this album but I like it allllllllll

does anyone know how this was recorded? it has a certain analog quality to it, but i bet i might just be projecting

i wrote him on myspace and he wrote back, said it was recorded on computer.

you and zs both claiming to have come close to this sound, will anyone actually back up their extravagant boasts with brute mp3 fact?

whoooooa no, that's not what I meant to imply - I said that Memory Tapes sounds similar to what I was trying to make, but that he does it a million times better than I ever could!

Me, I'm arrogant. I do mean to imply that me and my sisX0r, in our bedroom with our 4-track were better than Nite Jewel. ;-)

Not Memory Tapes, tho. He's special.

I think I would like Bicycle more without the New Order-esque guitar solo. A bit too much, really.

Haha that's precisely why I love it! (Just got around to hearing it via the new Kitsune Maison compilation.) But this is the same guy behind Ducktails? Saw him two months back at On Land in SF doing Ducktails stuff, it was a bit uncompelling but this Memory Tapes stuff knocks that completely into a cocked hat.

I don't think he's affiliated with Ducktails, although I'm no expert. As far as I know, he's currently recording as Memory Tapes/Weird Tapes/Memory Cassette, and also played with a band called Hail Social (never heard them).

Ducktails is the guitarist from Real Estate. They are from northern New Jersey (Ridgewood). Memory Tapes is also from NJ but down south more. -Different people.

The Memory Tapes LP finally arrived at Insound! Maybe they'll ship out soon.

is there an actual real estate album?

Yes the Real Estate album just came out, though the band has been selling copies earlier than the release date at their shows.

what's it called?

while answering j0rdan's question make sure to add a '.rar' to the end for googling convenience

No, no... be nice and buy it. Its self-titled.

lol deej

The industry is ruined the day you can press and rip vinyl from your home computer.

Super ruined that is, as opposed to the extra ruined it is right now.

considered the industry ruined then

Well its true you can rip it...

@j0rdan it's self titled.

self_titled.rar

real estate album not out until the 17th i believe

you can suck and still share a sound with someone great. but I was just curious because it's an interesting area to be playing around in. I don't know what HNIA is.

http://www.lmgtfy.com/?q=hnia

(Specifically their early 90s stuff, rather than the stuff they're doing now. Like, the first two albums or so. the "sound geek with a 4-track" era)

Cheers boomer. Nite Jewel and esp His Name Is Alive are a long way off from what I dig in Memory Tapes though.

What is it you like about them?

For me, it's totally the atmospherics, the dreamy textural stuff. I mean, my favourite moment is about 4:50 in Graphics, where the drum machine goes into New Order mode and that weird echoey NOISE goes off like an alarm as all the fuzzy sounds tinkle all around like wind-up birds gone wrong.

Trainer-squeak hooks, disco, big earnest 80s vibe, especially in the vocals, that shine& the lightness in the rhythm; the rhythm is so different and flat on those bands. Only heard a handful of stuff by each but I would never have thought about them in the same sense as Stop Talking.

still really loving this. : )

Playing The Luminaire, London Jan 20th 2010. Let's go!

ooh, i might come up for that

"Ducktails is the guitarist from Real Estate. They are from northern New Jersey (Ridgewood). Memory Tapes is also from NJ but down south more. -Different people.
Evan 10 Dec 2009"

I thought Memory Tapes was from
Philadelphia

this album has a cool jam or two but its the kind of thing that makes me want to write slate-style ACTUALLY, INDIE IS MORE A SINGLES GENRE contrary wisdom arguments

Revive!

This "Bicycle" song sounds A LOT like "The Long Dance" by Disco Inferno.

no interest in/talk of the new album on ILM? sounds pretty good to me if more of the same...

Finally got around to listening to this, and, um, wow, I had to actually go back and listen to snippets of Seek Magic to reassure myself I'd liked this artist for a reason.

I mean, it's pretty and all, but it just kind of ambles along in this very polite parlour-pop sort of way, but I am 3 songs from the end, and there is just absolutely *nothing* that leaps out in the way that Bicycle and Graphics did, the first times I heard each. I don't know if it's just the dynamics that feel lacking, or the sudden appearance of "whoa, where did that sudden four on the floor dance break just appear from?" which has gone missing.

Not feeling this, which is a real pity. (But I guess, also, I tried listening to Bicycle yesterday and I used to play that song over and over, but I think I just wore it out. So maybe it's just me that's moved on.)

Co-sign on everything you just said. I made it about 3/4 through and just turned it off. I don't understand what happened, because I liked Seek Magic a lot and all of his various releases under other aliases always had at least a worthwhile song or two.

I listened to this (Player Piano) a couple times when it was released and was like "meh" but I've come to really love it. It's kind of slinky and delicate and fantastic.

player piano was underrated. it reminded me of his hail social material, which i also liked. i really enjoy his singing, and was pleased to see it come out more on player piano. i just generally dug the understated approach to player piano as a nice alternative to the (delightful) bombast of seek magic.

from the stuff he's posted on soundcloud, i'm really excited about his upcoming grace/confusion LP. it sounds like he might be hitting a nice balance between the bombast and quietness of the first two albums.

had no idea about grace/confusion!

weird, how did i miss it?

haha what i started listening and it sounds like an elephant 6 version of american analog set...?

lmao @ me

grace/confusion ten years ago now, just listened to thru the field in the car today