On Friday, October 3rd at 2pm, Maltodextrin speaks with Verity Susman (Electrelane) and Matthew Simms (Wire, Better Corners, It Hugs Back, Uuuu, Fitted) of Canterbury based duo, MEMORIALS, ahead of their show at Bottom of the Hill in SF on Saturday, October 4th.
Debut album, Memorial Waterslides (Fire Records) is an otherworldly, surrealist pop record that is both timeless and timely, displaying a rare mix of classic songwriting and avant-garde attitudes.
MEMORIALS create panoramic pop that draws on both the familiar and the strange, while also treading new ground. With their playful and experimental style, combined with a love of good tunes, they sit comfortably alongside Broadcast, Portishead, Arthur Russell, The Velvet Underground, Yo La Tengo and Tortoise.
The album is awash with imagery evoking a lost future, a veiled present and a daydreamed past, each song playing a role in creating a swirling, widescreen atmosphere, the listener taken along for the ride. Produced entirely by the two of them, the sound of the record was inspired by the reel-to-reel tape experiments they first played around with onstage as they began to develop their multi-layered recordings for live performances as a duo.
Verity and Matthew arrived at MEMORIALS in reverse, escaping their soundtracking day jobs to create cosmic journeys through the garden shed into psychedelic rock, far-out folk and wild analogue electronics.
Photo: Holly Whitaker
