29 September 2010

Memoryhouse - the years EP (2010, Arcade Sound)

Borrowing their name from a Max Richter album, this Canadian duo (Denise Nouvion - vocals ; Evan Abeele - music) from Guelph, Ontario, is along their compatriot Foxes in Fiction, one of the very few interesting bands to emerge from this octopus scene that is chillwave, with a myriad of bands, blogs and videos serving an actual ebullience from which only a few will be retained, as always.



Directly you feel that Memoryhouse is not so interested in easy and attractive melodies and much more tempted by atmospheres, shoegaze and ethereal songwriting. In fact Memoryhouse reminds of what the UK band Insides tried to do on their 1993 album "Euphoria", with their soft melancholic minimal melodies, a love for keyboards and a certain debt towards the aesthetics of the best days of 4AD (Cocteau Twins, Spoonfed Hybrid / Pale Saints) and shoegazing (Slowdive, My Bloody Valentine), or to what Secret Cities did on their "Zurich" ep while they were still calling themselves The White Foliage, or what could Amman/Josh could have achieved with vocals on their "Places" EP.

Memoryhouse is everything but not a pop band and their background speaks in their favor,  as it was at first intended to be a multimedia art project, ambient music composed by Evan Abeele (a student of classical music) to be associated with pictures of Denise Nouvion, and it turned into intimate melancholic dreampop songs.

This is their debut ep and up to now everything is perfect on it, each of the four songs  is delicate, attractive and pleasant, without trying to hard to get this result.The alchemy between the reverberated but crystal clear vocals of Denise work well with the blurry landscapes and lazy but propulsive beats of Evan. Maybe you could protest against the mellowness, but she adds droplets of ice to the musical smoothness with shivering results. 

I'm very curious to discover which directions they will explore now, but this free EP won't be forgotten and sparks the interest, creating an aura of seductive mystery.

No comments:

Post a Comment