memorials - memorial waterslides - fire

Following their acclaimed 2023 soundtracks ‘Women Against The Bomb’ and ‘Tramps!’, a European tour with Stereolab (they’ve been called “Stereolab’s evil twin”) and a new music commission from the Centre Pompidou in Paris, 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.

While they were busy working on three film soundtrack commissions concurrently, they began writing new music, with no intentions other than an escape from looming deadlines! Having been amused by the idea of waterslides as memorials, a concept they first came across on a poster for the Austin Dyke March (advertising the brilliant ‘Susan Sontag Memorial Waterslide’) they began naming new recordings after imagined memorial waterslides. At the time they did not yet exist as a band, but following a surprise invitation to perform one of their scores live at a film screening in Paris, they quickly settled on becoming MEMORIALS.

Meanwhile the waterslides were gathering in the background, a continually spiralling cluster of moods and sounds, shaped by the duo into a wide-ranging collection of experimental pop songs, filled with the unexpected, encompassing huge variety whilst retaining a distinctive identity across the album.

Produced entirely by the two in their own studio (garden shed!), 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. As multi-instrumentalists they have become masters at channelling their sound for live shows, juggling instruments in a set-up resembling that of a 5-piece band.

The songs on the album are infectiously melodic and allow for endless directions of travel. Punctuated by surprising noises, unpredictable breaks and unexpected accelerations, they create a panoramic pop sound that draws in both the familiar and the strange and takes them on somewhere new. With their playful and experimental style, combined with a love of good tunes, MEMORIALS sit comfortably alongside Broadcast, Portishead, Arthur Russell, The Velvet Underground, Yo La Tengo and Tortoise.

Memorial Waterslides 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. Opening with tape loops slowly unfurling beneath two syncopated bass lines before bursting into the baroque-psych of ‘Acceptable Experience’, the duo’s unconventional approach is apparent from the start. Side A continues with the melodic pop of ‘Lamplighter’ and then ‘Cut It Like A Diamond’, with its dark sense of despair, shifting continually over a driving bass line that is doggedly determined to remain the same. ‘Name Me’ is the first twist into folk territory before circling into a crescendo of looped Farfisa organs and electric guitars hit with drumsticks. The side ends with ‘Memorial Waterslide II’, a tape piece that is cut up, looped, slowed down, sped up and kicked into orbit.

The second side takes things further, opening with the dubbed-out tape-loop-pop of ‘Book Stall’, the free jazz-leaning ‘False Landing’, the inexplicable ‘Horse Head Pencil’, the proto-prog of the nine-minute ‘I Have Been Alive’ and finally ‘The Politics of Whatever’, a beautiful, desolate song encased in the echoes and tape loops of the album that precedes it.

With Memorial Waterslides, MEMORIALS have created an otherworldly, surrealist pop record that is both timeless and timely, displaying a rare mix of classic songwriting and avant-garde attitudes. It is a remarkably confident and memorable first album.