Interview: Memory Tapes

 

The reviews for Seek Magic have been great everywhere and it is troubling lots of end of year lists including our own, did it catch you by surprise just how far and wide it has reached?

Yeah (laughs)... the internet! I've been surprised myself. It came out in Australia last week and it was kind of blowing my mind how many people knew about it there. I really don't know how it's getting around. It's not even that readily available although I'm sure it is on Bit Torrent sites. As far as actual physical releases, it's pretty limited but it's been cool.

You've released a number of one-offs as Memory Cassette, Weird Tapes and Memory Tapes - was Seeks Magic a collection of those or more of a sit down and make an album type album?

My intention with doing the Memory Tapes record was that I wanted to kind of start afresh. I know a lot of people keep seeing as a third identity but I really wanted to be done with the other two and I just wanted to make a record from scratch and that was really the goal with doing this one.

A pretty general question but how are these songs made!? Is it really just you on your own with a bunch of instruments?

It's just me and pretty traditional stuff really. They usually start off on a guitar or piano and I just write them as regular songs. Then when I record them, I just use a lot of overdubbing, I just use a tapedeck cos' I'm actually not particularly good with computers or programming. I tend to just overdub and play, if you know what I mean, so there's a lot of layering and I just play all the parts.

People have caught on so much that demand has brought you back to the live stage. These January dates are your first shows as Memory Tapes, right? And there are more in the pipeline too?

Yeah they're the first shows and I'm not quite sure what I'm going to do at them... (laughs nervously) but I'm sure I'm going to be ready by the time January comes. And I think they're are more and there will be some in the US, people here are kind of annoyed at me 'cause I haven't played here yet (laughs).

 

I've spoken to a lot of labels in America but I don't know, it's not really that urgent. I mean, I put it out myself here, at least digitally and it's on limited vinyl. I don't love record labels (laughs) so I'm not in any rush.

I read recently that if you were to play live, you'd try and get a band together. Is that going to happen?

I did try but it didn't really come together very well so when I come over to play, it'll probably be me and a drummer. My hope is to play guitar and have some bits of hardware. I'm sure I'll change it quite a lot to play it live and to make it interesting for myself. I don't want to just stand there playing the tracks off the computer.

Are you looking forward to surprising people that are expecting and electronic musician, just one man and his laptop?

It kind of surprises me that people would be surprised by that because when I hear the record, I'm thinking okay there's a lot of instruments on here but then I don't think people believe anything they hear anymore (laughs). They think everything is just sample of other records or something like that. The tracks are so layered that obviously there's no way for me to play them as they are by myself so I really don't know how it's going to come together (that nervous laugh again) but I'll do my best!

Do you enjoy the prospect though of breathing new life into songs by having to change them for a live setting?

Yeah I'd like to be able to rework them and I'd probably like to be able to rework them way more than anyone's going to want to hear them reworked (laughs). That's probably my main fear, I'll play a show and get a lot of 'why didn't it sound like it did on the record' but I
like that kind of thing. I've always been a fan of people reinterpreting their own music when they play live. I don't really want to hear the record played for me. I have the record.

You've played live shows before though, that was with your old band, right?

Yeah I played in a band called Hail Social that I really don't like (laughs). It was more of a rock band, I guess, I sang and I played guitar. It was a really weird situation because I was pressured into it by friends and I wanted to try and break out of my shell a bit and a I tried but the music never came out the way I wanted to or the way it does when I do it by myself. We toured, came to the UK and did all the things you wanted to do but I was never really happy with the music. I always felt kind of embarrassed by the band, not to talk terribly of the band but it just wasn't the right thing for me. It wasn't a pleasant experience.

Did you go straight from that into Memory Tapes or what effectively is Memory Tapes as we know it today?
 

Actually some of the Memory Cassette stuff was before the band, like from the 90's when I was a teenager. During the end of the band was when I started doing the Weird Tapes stuff and then the band broke up and I started releasing some stuff on my own. It was all happening before, during and after the band.

I imagine the Weird Tapes blog must rack up some serious hits because you're one of the most generous artist's around in terms of giving away MP3's!

I'm impatient (laughs). I just like to put things out! It's really hard for me to wait, everything that comes out is always old. Like when my record came out, it was already a year old which I know is normal, but for me I just get frustrated. I'm always kind of sitting on a load of stuff and waiting on someone to give me the word that I'm allowed to share it. I don't really see any harm in it. I think people are going to download music for free anyway so you might as well just make it available in a not confusing way.

How big is the pile of tunes you're sitting on now?

It's pretty good - probably about six remixes I've done that haven't come out yet and a bunch of tracks for my next record which are not totally finished and some other things. I'm not really sure.

Can you tell us about any of the one's that are coming up?

I just did one of Gucci Mane for this Mad Decent record, they're doing an official mix tape for him. That one was cool because it was something kind of different to what I usually work on and I think it turned out well. I just did one for Tanlines - we just did a trade, I did one for them and they did one for me. What are the others? I'm doing one for Phoenix... I think I have one coming up for the Go Team. There are more. I just can't think of them. I get real confused about what I'm doing...

I imagine you're getting to the stage where you're having to turn down more remixes than you accept?

I have gotten to the point where I have to turn them down just because I haven't got time. It also got to the point over the summer where I was doing so many, that I really didn't have time to work on my own record. I want to have another record out fairly soon and with this live thing too, I have been having to turn down remixes but I still do them once in a while.

Is it a completely different skill, reappraising someone else's work or is it similar to making your own stuff?

For me, it's pretty similar. Some people take remixes as you're given the original song and you have to improve it but that seems kind of presumptuous to me. I don’t look at it that way, I think you're given the original song and then you fuck with it! I don't feel any kind of pressure to turn it into some club monster, I just mess around with it and do whatever. Some people get stoked with that and then some people get frustrated - sometimes I have to prove to people that I actually used some of the original song! (laughs) I find it quite freeing, I don't put pressure on myself like I do with my own music.

How long have you been working on the new record? How's it sounding compared to Seek Magic?

I started to work on it around September and the stuff I have so far is kind of different. The songs are a little bit more direct, maybe shorter and the arrangement are less overblown and the sounds are a little bit less synthetic but at the same time, maybe someone who isn't me would think it sounds pretty similar (laughs). I get hung up on the nuances. A world of difference to me mightn't be the same to someone else. I also never know until it's done. The record that just came out went through some many iterations so the record may be nothing like I'm describing it now when it finally comes out.

Two of the tracks you gave away recently - Treeship and Walk Me Home - were monsters in terms of length so that's not maybe the direction you're header!?

No, the album is pretty much the polar opposite. Those were a chance to do more formless things and the record I'm working on now is a little bit more pop song oriented. Not like huge pop songs, just a little bit more of a 60's pop song influence but who knows what it'll be like when it's done.