Memory Cells - No People Here
Originally the soundtrack to an Ambient VHS video release shot by Stephen Rennicks while he and fellow group members Anthony Carroll and Adrienne Flynn recorded their 2000 debut album Night, No People Here is available on CD for the first time. Formed in 1999 in the bedroom of a Dublin council house, Memory Cells broke up in May 2001 at the end of their one and only gig in Belfast, which must have been quite an event. The moody and muted scintillation of their home recordings , preserved for memory in fetching handmade sleeve art, suggests a trio destined for interesting things. Rennicks, for example went on to make a short film about Richard Shaver, whose early writings in Amazing Stories helped prepare America for the flying saucer scares of the 1950s.
Ken Hollings, The Wire
Memory Cells - We Have Found The New Jerusalem (Ancient Records)
This boldly titled recording is the second album from Memory Cells, and marks a big leap in confidence for the
band. Produced by Maura O'Boyle, it sees the group relocating from the bedroom
to the studio, and making the jump from 2 to 16 tracks. The same musical building
blocks remain in place, however: the spectral lines of guitar, the melancholic
keyboard swathes, the fragmentary percussives. But whereas Memory Cells were previously
hesitant, reluctant to commit, with this recording they boldly stake their claim.
Designed for ambient listening in the true sense and to be perceived as one piece
rather than a collection of songs, the stated intention is to evoke a sense of
mystery, timelessness and cosmic engagement. The scope of their imagination is
impressive, the breadth of their ambition laudable, the scale of their achievement
not to be underestimated. Like their cited mystical influences, Memory Cells find
heaven in a wild flower and eternity in a grain of sand. Going one better though
than first century Gnostics, C.G. Jung, the writers of the Dead Sea Scrolls or
William Blake, this Dublin three-piece also find spiritual fulfillment through
abstract semi-electronic instrumental sounds. Simple, sparse and resolutely hypnotic,
this is 'time-and-place' music, suitable for late night meditative introspection.
A good accompaniment to thoughtful silence, a bad soundtrack for a Saturday night
out - unless you intend sitting on a rock in the desert, that is. Memory Cells
may not literally have found that fabled, mystical city but with this recording
they have certainly advanced a few steps closer.
Lee Casey, Dublin Event
Guide
Memory Cells - Night
Night presents a thematic series of primitive forlorn
sketches - a melancholic rumination on memory and place, some of which was originally
recorded to accompany an "Ambient film" entitled 'No People Here' and made by
the group themselves. In its bleak, frozen beauty it could almost be Russian,
bringing to mind the eternally lingering camerawork of director Andrei Tarkovsky,
with whom they share an obsession with the occult power of secret spaces. In reality
they're a three piece from Dublin, combining sparse, single-note keyboard melodies
with simplistic bass patterns, minimal percussion and slow picked acoustics all
beautifully rendered on a fuzzy two track portastudio. Only Bristol's Movietone
can leave you feeling so nostalgic for places you've never been.
David Keenan, The Wire
Memory Cells - Night
The aptly titled Night is a collection
of live recordings on a 2-track from five different all-night sessions from January
30th to July 1999. Lo-fi ambient music can easily be a one-way ticket to extreme
self-indulgence, but in the hands of the Memory Cell's evocative marriage of melodic
Enoesque drones and subtly stripped down ramshackle-blues, it makes for one of
the more challenging, yet ultimately rewarding, listening experiences around.
The loose and minimal percussive production is a joy, the soundscapes here orchestrated
by tone and mood. These strengths are beautifully illustrated on the lusciously
simple "Know Time" and the mysterious lo-fi lunacy of "Spanish Prison Dance".
In abandoning stereotypical musical arrangements, Memory Cells have passed the
initial debut acid test with flying (dark) colours.
9/12 Eamonn
Sweeney, Hot Press
Memory Cells - Night
This release exists as a document in the true sense: amusical,
literary and photographic snapshot of three people sharing a place and time together.
Located in their hermetically sealed universe, that time is night, the eternal.
An attempt to invoke the mystery of the nocturnal through text and pictures as
well as sound, this is a brave first release from Dublin-based trio of Adrienne
Flynn, Anthony Carroll and Stephen Rennicks. They recorded the album playing live
to a two track tape machine over five sessions and you can tell that they have
spent time lisening to Eno, Can and the improvising American underground. They
don't really believe in songs, preferring to jam out ideas. 'Night' features sixteen
of these sketches , veering from thirty seconds to eight minutes. Uncompromising
and uncommercial, its a sprawling hour-long affair with primitive, almost tribal
rhythms feeding simplistic two-note repeated riffs and crazy-chord cheap keyboard
noises. Memory Cells sound will be recognizable to any familiar with their kindred
spirits, The Wormholes, though more ambient and without the latters paranoid edge.
Its either going to hypnotise you or send you to sleep, but whichever way it goes,
Memory Cells will be happy you took the time to respond to their night call.
Lee Casey, Dublin Event Guide