Short-Term Memory
Plus Or Minus Two
About this item
"Plus or Minus Two" compiles four songs from Kansas City wave pioneers Short-Term Memory’s first cassette album, "Every Head Needs Cleaning", with two previously unreleased tracks recorded in the 90s.
This EP focuses on the group’s prescient dance-floor DIN-sync workouts which share sensibilities with contemporaneous early Detroit experiments by Juan Atkin’s Cybotron, Ron Hardy’s visionary Kikrokos tape edit, Shoc Corridor’s extended 808 exercises, and 90s Techno Pop by Haruomi Hosono. Rounding off the EP is the existential electronic soul ballad "Words".
Kansas City, 1983: a band formed, wires connected and synapses fired. Three friends, tired of guitar/bass/drums rock started jamming with newly acquired synths and Roland TR 808. They called themselves Short-Term Memory. Thanks to the vanguard technology of the time, these electronic instruments spoke to each other, and Jim Skeel, John Paul & Robert Duckworth could program their instruments, riding the DIN-sync wave. Weekly jams became more ambitious, and in 1983 they released their first album "Every Head Needs Cleaning" on their own Silly Poodle Music label. Over the 80s members drifted in and out of the group, and they released two cassettes, an LP and a 7” EP. By the 90s Jim Skeel was at the helm, the only original member, and joined by Tim Higgins he continued to record in MIDI mode for a few years before pulling the plug, leaving recordings and memories that resisted the great fadeout of time, and today sound vibrant and more visionary than ever.
STAFF COMMENTS
Patrick says: Around a dozen releases in and Seance Centre are yet to put a foot wrong. Whether it be deep disco-not-disco, experimental, ambient or new age, the reissue label's aim is always true. Here they hit us with four proto-techno, synth wave jams and two unreleased cuts from Kansas City's Short-Term Memory. As well as pre-Detroit hardware heaters like "Twitch & Jerk", "Hysteria" and "The Veldt", check the esoteric flavours of "City In Mind" and lost wave ballad "The Words" for more sombre scenarios. Killer artwork from Alan Briand as standard...
TRACK LISTING
Twitch & Jerk
Yelping Doggies
City In Mind
Hysteria
The Veldt
The Words