Listening to this on the way to work was like transporting, Life On Mars style, into a mid 70s Californian FM station playing the latest disco-rock hybrid - everything looks that bit greyer, the sheen shone, the analogue synths just about giving up the ghost to the tyranny of Casio DX7s and digital synthesis...
Or maybe it's the 80s I'm thinking of... the sound is certainly somewhere... not of it's place... perhaps it's telling that they're using a still from Poltergeist on their blogpage... a film that seems to bridge the 70s and 80s... that (at the time) smudged the boundaries between ghost stories then and ghost stories now...
It's frighteningly accurate (despite the fact I can't place it, perhaps because of it) , clearly loved, clearly well named... Memory Cassette... you can't hear the hiss in the lilting little songs but you can hear the degradation, the warmth, the absence of modern living...
the hauntological word again? perhaps. In an Ariel Pink kind of way (it doesn't sound as degraded as that)
There's a mini-collective of artists centred around the Weird Tapes, Memory Cassette and Hail Social outfits and there's a little artistic momentum here... a certain integrity of design... taking in different aspects of disco, electro, soft-rock, even some little folk moments...
Worth keeping an eye on...
1 comment:
fab site, of-course. but must say, weird tapes/memory cassette peeps are surely better than just 'worth keeping an eye on'? the tune 'heavens' (can't remember which artist name is attached) is one of the best records I've heard in ages, right up there with aeroplanes' mix of grace jones' 'williams blood', IMHO. anyhoo, much appreciation for your work. props!
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