Grace/Confusion
- Memory Tapes
- Band Name: Memory Tapes
- Record Label: Carpark Records
- Release Date: Dec 4, 2012
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Dec 3, 201270While a good background album it may be, it's not exactly gripping. The songs are too multifaceted to feel cohesive, yet they never seem strikingly experimental.
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Jan 9, 201377Ultimately, Grace/Confusion is a production best staged in the theatre of your mind.
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Dec 6, 201270Grace/Confusion goes above and beyond the call of pop, and signals grander adventures to come.
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Dec 5, 201270Grace/Confusion sees Hawk get back on track, by remembering what worked in the first place.
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Dec 4, 201270The album, titled Grace/Confusion, offers the chillwave sound that Hawk is known for but with a fuller, crisper and more melodic take.
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Dec 7, 201260[Davye Hawk] likened this album's conception to "a maze to get lost in," which is the exact way listeners should approach his latest creation, for all of its sprawling incertitude.
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Dec 17, 201270An experiment in style that is perhaps a little confusing at first; but more than makes up for it in its grace.
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Dec 4, 201260Grace/Confusion could have been a great 20-minute EP. Instead, it's a listless 40 minutes that works best as background music.
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Jan 9, 201360So safely, solidly familiar is Hawk's third album that it's enough to make you nostalgic for the sound as it splutters on its deathbed.
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Jan 18, 201380Atmospheric, reverbed beats that suggest indie boys who dance. [Feb 2013, p.98]
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Dec 3, 201270Grace/Confusion is an aptly confounding record, its six tracks very much dissimilar to each other yet held together with a sense of grand gesturing and tireless virtuosity.
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Dec 13, 201260You don't always know what cosmic tunnel Memory Tapes will drag you through, but you can always expect a metamorphosis.
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Dec 6, 201262While Grace/Confusion may lean too heavily on Hawk's production, it's a hair better than Player Piano. But it's hard to call it an "improvement" or "progression" considering it's hardly outside the scope of what Memory Tapes has done so far.
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Dec 4, 201280They take the things about Italo disco and synth pop that I love and imbibe them with genuine humanity and masterful songwriting.
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Dec 11, 201260With no track under six minutes in length, some editing wouldn't have gone amiss. [Jan 2013, p.107]
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Dec 3, 201240It's simply warmed-over easy listening as rendered by a lo-fi producer who, ironically enough, seems outdated and outmatched in a genre known for being both retro-obsessed and DIY.
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Dec 6, 201280The reinvigorated results feel warm-blooded, definite, vulnerable, exposed.
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Dec 4, 201291By throwing out the genre rulebook, Hawk is pushing electronic music into weirder, more exciting territory, chillwave purists be damned.
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Dec 4, 201275The disc's six tracks clock in at less than 40 minutes, so there isn't really time to screw things up on a royal scale, making Grace/Confusion a fine listen.
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Dec 10, 201270The album clocks in under 40 minutes, and its experimental touches are modest.
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Dec 10, 201260A strangely arid collection of tracks that register not so much as songs, but as experiments following arbitrary, sometimes aimless, courses.
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Dec 3, 201280sity. Dayve Hawke has created a record that's as graceful (sorry) as it is mighty.
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Dec 11, 201270Mostly, he comes across as a one-man Arcade Fire. [Jan 2013, p.79]
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Dec 17, 201250Player Piano was received coolly for its lack of ambition and it's depressing to hear a follow-up that stubbornly refuses to learn from Memory Tapes' mistakes.