MEMORY TAPES - Player Piano

The recent, "successful" chillwave wave with its ties to hypnagogic pop owes a great deal to Dayve Hawk. All things considered, "Seek Magic" still ranks among the best and best-selling debuts of the micro-phenomenon that emerged a couple of years ago in indie circuits. A small but great piece of home-produced magic, delivering eight gems of downtempo and rigorously chamber-pop, irresistibly dreamlike. Nothing more accomplished has come out of the virtual circle of young sound-tinkerers, those paradoxical nostalgics for the most synthetic and sun-drenched side of the Eighties.

That's why there's so much curiosity buzzing around this long-awaited return. What we need to understand is where this painfully shy young gentleman from New Jersey might take a sharper turn or dig in with more force. At the same time, it's only right to approach "Player Piano" with a certain caution, without wallowing in the pretense of finding, precisely, that same "magical" makeup, or perhaps something excessively strange and disorienting. Nonetheless, Hawk does everything he can to complicate his life (and ours), treading new paths with agonizing timidity, while still lingering on the same melancholy platforms, draped in a soundscape of apparent drowsiness - though without much conviction, except for the drum-driven "Worries" (in a small way the most sixties-leaning track of the bunch) and the progressive synth-pop stride of closer "Trance Sister", cut à la Rick Smith. Meanwhile, undisturbed at both the opening and close sits "Musicbox", a brisk piano moment turned xylophone, stripped of any emotional payoff.

Still, from the first pop trinkets of "Wait In The Dark" onward, you find yourself trying to follow the sorcerer's apprentice's wand, chasing with some satisfaction that trail of carefree melodies, often built to unveil synth rainbows in the second half of each track, triggered in alternation like a toy switching on and off. The only shame is that the spark never catches fire, staying trapped between a fleeting hypnagogic pulse ("Offers") and a negligible instrumental fascination ("Humming"), with the improbable summer "hit" "Sun Hits" placed right in the middle - the only catchy, silly-enough-to-stand-out moment amid the rest of the blandness.

But that's really not enough for young Hawk. Which is why he has no choice but to rediscover himself (and let himself be rediscovered), maybe through his other two projects on the back burner, Memory Cassette and Weird Tapes, or perhaps with his three old friends from Philadelphia (Matt Maraldo, Dan Henry and Richie Roxas) in the unsung and never-forgotten Hail Social.

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22/07/2011