Modern Tapes makes excellent post-punk/new wave music. This is what I know for sure. The band’s Facebook page also tells me: “MODERN TAPES formed in a bomb shelter in 2010. They played and recorded underground for almost a year. They used equipment left behind by a past generation.” And there we are… quite the mysterious/romantic bio, no? Fortunately, the gang at All Things Go brought the Tel Aviv-based band to light, and now we all get to enjoy them!
For me, the star of their Modern Tapes EP is “Caroline.” It’s a wonderful, Galaxie 500 meets The Pains of Being Pure at Heart kind of song – with a great video (directed by Nir Ben Jacobs, who also directed Great Lake Swimmers’ “River’s Edge” and The Walkmen’s “On the Water“)- that both celebrates and reconfigures the past. On the concept for the video, Nir says:
“Caroline sounds like an 80′s song from the future,” says Nir, “The first thing that came to mind was Flashdance (1983) and purple. The second thing that came to mind was apocalypse and an abandoned building. The rest sort of fell into place.”
And if you’d like to listen to the whole EP (and you should!), here you go. It’s even yours to download:
The Modern Tapes EP [mp3] by Modern Tapes
When you’re done, head on over to visit them on Facebook. And if that doesn’t sate you, check out their rather new-wavy cover of The Smiths’ “Vicar in a Tutu.”