Memory Cassette Asleep At A Party

There is a song that’s sat quietly but consistently in my music library for perhaps a year now, which I listen to maybe every few days. The act that spawned it has since snowballed into a slightly bigger thing- Memory Tapes- but nonetheless ‘Asleep at a Party’ by Memory Cassette remains, in my view at least, the best output by one relatively quiet Dayve Hawk, the creator of both ‘Memory’ incarnations. Overall, what I love about this song is that it is a dreamily surreal, even tired- in the sense of lethargy- take on an excellent melody. In one of my previous posts, I mentioned that in my view Washed Out created one of the albums of 2010. Their drowsy stupor was hypnotising, and so it is with ‘Asleep at a Party’. Memory Tapes, like Washed Out, since fell under the beguiling but annoyingly termed and media-constructed combination of matter: ‘chillwave’, when Hawk released his first album, Seek Magic. (We have since of course heard the phrase, ‘illwave’- trumpeted I have noticed by The Guardian’s Music blog for the likes of Perfume Genius and HTDW.)

But I digest. I have really found that I can listen to ‘Asleep at a Party’ without ever getting bored. Fuzzy, enigmatic but continually alluring, I hope Dayve Hawk’s brief preceding period as Memory Cassette was part of the reason for blogs such as Gorilla vs Bear, Pitchfork and later even titans of the British print press to pay attention: both blogs posted the song when it went online. More recently, Memory Tapes have posted a new track and announced a second album. You can find their blog here and newbie song here. Or just lower your chin a bit. That’s it.

Memory Tapes- Today is Our Life