Memory Tapes is the musical vehicle for Dayve Hawk, one-time member of Philadelphia post-punks Hail Social, turned stay-at-home-dad and reclusive producer. From his property in rural New Jersey, Hawk makes volumes of melancholy electro tunes steeped in the happy/sad haze of nostalgia. He arrived on the pop-cultural radar in 2009, when tracks by three separate Hawk pseudonyms —Weird Tapes, Memory Tapes, and Memory Cassette— started trickling out into the blogosphere with no explanation as to their author's identity. Eventually, Hawk outed himself, started doing interviews, and settled on Memory Tapes as his handle. Under that name, he released one of 2009's best albums, Seek Magic.
Interview: 3 December 2009
Now that you've broken your silence and are talking to people, how do you find perceptions of your music are? Wildly varied and strange? Or universal?
"It does seem to be universal. I was actually just thinking about that: everyone seems to relate to the same things, and feel nostalgic for the same things. There are these real common-threads where I didn't know that there would be."
Is nostalgia important in your music?
"It's a big part of what I do. I don't know if it's as specific as some people interpret it as being. Like, when people portray me as having some sort of obsession with the '80s. I mean, I grew up in the '80s, so it's something I can reference more realistically than if I reference the '50s. Nostalgia a big part of how I relate to music, so I think it's definitely there. But it's more a general nostalgia that I feel, as opposed to being about a musical era."
Are you a nostalgic human-being in your daily life?
"I think so. Obviously nostalgia has to do with the past, but for me it's not about the distant past. I'm nostalgic for five minutes ago. I think that's just how I am. I just feel removed all the time; that's just my general state. I never feel 'in it,' I always feel outside of things. Like, if you're to sit down and write a song, maybe some people will feel really invested in things, have these things happening right now that they really desperately want to write about. I don't. I never feel wrapped up in things like that. I feel like, when I'm writing, instead of trying to write a love-song, I'd be more apt to write a song about trying to write a love-song. That sense of distance from the immediate, it's easy to translate that into some sort of 'nostalgic' observation, but I think my music is more just melancholy than pining for the past. But, even if those are two distinctly different feelings to me, when they come out in my music they end up sounding the same."
Has that sense of distance always lead you to feel like you're making your music in isolation?
"Well, growing up in Southern Jersey, in the pinelands area, I didn't know anyone else who was into music. I remember thinking that maybe not that many people were into music [laughs]. Then, when I got older, I met people who'd all grown up with friends into music, had started bands together. Rather than growing up joining bands, I grew up trying to learn how to play different instruments, and mostly trying to figure out how to record, because it was only ever just me. I think I'm naturally pretty anti-social, so that suited me. And it's ended up being a part of what I do."
What sort of mode did you first start making music in?
"I started out playing the drums when I was about nine. And, then, I discovered The Beatles; I found some old Beatles LPs, and played them on my little Fischer Price thing, and that's when I decided that I wanted to write songs. And, I got a guitar, and started recording on my sister's toy karaoke machine. It had two tape decks, and I figured out I could use that to bounce tracks as a rudimentary form of multi-track recording. I was maybe 12 or 13 at that time, and, over the years, I just slowly got more stuff and learned how to do more things."
The narrative line from your isolated youth to your isolated now seems really direct. So, how does Hail Social fit into that?
"After I graduated high-school, I didn't go to college. I just got a job at a grocery store. I met a kid there named Matt [Maraldo], we became friends, and I found out he was a drummer. Not only that, but he was from a different area than me, and there there were a whole bunch of different kids who all played, who all were in bands. He saw something in me and pushed really hard for us to start a band. I really didn't want to, but I eventually said okay."
Why didn't you want to?
"Because I don't have much of a performer's personality. And that was his goal. He said: 'you have these songs, we need to play them!' Because, even back then, I had recorded a lot of the songs that, like, forever later came out as Memory Cassette. That's what I was already doing. Matt wanted to put a band together and play shows in Philadelphia. And, I just didn't want to play live. I don't have any desire to be a performer. But, no matter how reluctant I was, he kept pushing me. And we were friends, so that definitely held sway over me. So, we eventually started [Hail Social], and then we kinda did the band thing for like four or five years. We did two records, we toured, but to me, it never really worked. We were never really happy with the music, he was always like 'why is the music you're doing now nothing like the music you were doing before?' And, eventually, those guys just wanted to go to college and get real jobs. So, the band fell apart. And that was good for me, because I just went back to doing what I naturally do, and here I am."
Are you still against performing? I can imagine the pressure's being applied on you to take to the stage.
"I don't know if I am or not. I didn't intend to, but, yeah, there's definitely been a lot of pressure to do it. And, to a certain degree I'd like to try and do it. Because, when I was in Hail Social, that was a situation where it didn't really feel like it was my own. This definitely does feel like my own. So, I'm trying to not be cynical, and imagine myself going out and actually having fun, but I don't know how realistic that is. I'm still thinking it over."
Next: "I don't want this air of mystery. What I want would be genuine anonymity..."
