Musings

A little delayed but – I was at The Luminaire last week for a long-awaited London show. It was… very strange.

Memory Tapes - Seek Magic

It took me a while to warm to the sound as he started with an instrumental electronic number, I tend to be more about the vocal, but as soon as Dayve “Memory Tapes” Hawk opened his mouth, I was dancing.

I half feel that the venue wasn’t entirely appropriate to the sound. Not meaning to criticise The Luminaire as it’s a wonderfully obscure and intimate little venue but the last show I went to there was Chris Garneau and at that one the majority of the audience was sitting cross-legged in pin-drop silence on the “dancefloor”.

Memory Tapes requires movement. If not full-on rave glowstick dancing (which might be a little over the top) then at least a trance-like sway with a raised arm every now and then. Dreamy and almost hypnotic at times.

My favourite track of the set was Plain Material, which is on his debut full-length release, Seek Magic (available from Rough Trade UK as a double CD) and he’s doing a run of further live shows over the couple of months – 4 in the UK in March. Last week was fantastic – I’d highly recommend trying to catch one of them.

Nothing too strange there really…except that he ran off the stage at the end of his set without saying anything. Literally… nothing. We weren’t sure whether he was coming back, whether to applaud, whether he was done. Hung about for 5 or so and then left… so I really hope there wasn’t an encore.