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The first question is one of etiquette. How best to address the man of musical mystery who to date has worked under the aliases of Memory Cassette, Weird Tapes, and most recently combining the two, Memory Tapes. “Hi, I'm Dayve”, he says, by way of an easygoing introduction.
This is his second visit to Manchester, the home of New Order, perhaps the biggest of his largely Anglophile musical influences (for evidence, hear the typically Bernard Sumneresque riff with which his track 'Green Knight' climaxes). Back in January, he played his first ever live show here: “It was a coincidence. People definitely read into it, but no, it was more just like they booked some shows and it just worked out. Up until a week before we came, I was pretty much unconvinced that I was going to do it”. Ever since, he's been embroiled in a tour which looks set to rival Bob Dylan for perpetuity: “We did dates here, then we went home and did some stuff on the East coast, then went out to the West coast, now we're back here, then we're going to SXSW”.
As evidenced by the band of gold on his guitar fretting hand, Dayve Hawke is a family man: “I get homesick, for sure, I have a five year old daughter so it's hard to be away from her. That's the hardest thing about it”. So the trip has been short on Spinal Tap style japes: “It's been pretty chilled so far, just a lot of driving and a lot of flying, one day in every city. e stayed an extra day in Paris, so my friends went around, but I had to do promo stuff and I didn't really see much of anything. No legendary shit has gone down”.
He longs to return to the USA's eastern seaboard, a place of geographical and cultural isolation which has shaped his unique music: “What New Jersey is known for is the sub-New York Sopranos rap thing. I'm from south New Jersey which is a rural area. There are no bands where I'm from, there's nothing out there. The closest area where there would be any kind of music scene would be Philadelphia. There's so many different things in Philly, there's the lo-fi rocky thing like Dr Dog and Kurt Vile, and then there's Mad Decent, but I don't feel connected to any kind of scene.”
Regardless, many have made comparisons with musical contemporaries including Toro Y Moi, under the loosely defined terminology of chill wave. “I've asked around, like, 'where did this come from?' It started out as a joke on [merciless scenester-bating blog] Hipster Runoff. I can vaguely hear where people draw the comparisons, but over the long stretch, when all these different people keep making records I don't think it's going to seem like much of a scene because it's not built on any place or culture. chill wave is a terrible name”. So what words, if any, would he use to describe his own music? “I don't think I would” he says, citing “the whole dancing about architecture thing”, in reference to famous Frank Zappa quote.
A multi-instrumentalist and technical virtuoso, he immerses himself in painstaking studio processes: “It's completely DIY, I definitely don't have the money to go to a studio, but I don't know if I would if I could. I like doing it myself, I'm interested in all that, I like gear, recording, producing, and trying to figure out how to make things sound the way I want them to sound on modest means. I would like to have nicer gear, obviously, but you just slowly acquire things, I would like to grow what I'm capable of doing”.
These capabilities have led to remix commissions for artists including Phoenix, Tanlines and Yeasayer: “It's how I make a living right now, I get a lot of requests, usually fairly cool bands. Sometimes it's terrible” he admits: “I did Britney Spears. Anybody that asks me to do it I'll try it, and if they hate it they'll just reject it. I just try to be open minded about it. I did one for Taken By Trees, which got rejected. She wanted it to sound more like Memory Cassette. She had a very specific idea of what she wanted me to do so I said 'just don't use it, that's cool' but generally it goes well”. As for artists he would most like to hear remixing his own material, “Boards Of Canada would be cool” he says, adding “Aphex Twin, Kevin Shields” to reveal yet more Anglophile influences.
And somehow, in spite of these activities, he has simultaneously found time to work on new Memory Tapes material: “Oh yeah, a lot of stuff” he exclaims, “I should have a new album before the year's out. I would love to do a soundtrack. I have a lot of reference points when I'm writing, visual more than they are literal, I could see how the music would be cinematic in that way. I like Stanley Kubric a lot, the early Terry Gilliam films, Michel Gondry, Wes Anderson. I have so many ideas of different kinds of records I want to make”.
He also has many ideas of different records he does not want to make: “If I didn't have samplers or synthesisers, I guess I would just be making garage rock. I'm not sure I would suddenly churn out a Fleetwood Mac record. I listen to a lot of classic 1960s pop music but I'm not going to write any old Kinks songs”. TAGS: Memory Tapes, Dr Dog, Kurt Vile Words by: Benjamin Thomas
Links:
Memory Tapes - Myspace
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