It's not that difficult to have a stab at just which other bands and musicians Memory Maze looks to for inspiration. The work of London producer/writer/singer/musician Gavin Ellis, the very name Memory Maze has you thinking that the music is designed to replicate a daydream, and having a new single called 'Like A Mirage' only deepens these suspicions. With a video that borders on the psychedelic, showing images through broken panes of glass and seemingly random shots in slow motion, all to the backdrop of blue skies and beaches, that settles it.
True to this promise, 'Like A Mirage' is all soft vocals and pastel shades, but it doesn't simply lurk in the background as incidental music. Dave Fridmann (Flaming Lips, Mercury Rev, MGMT) is cited as an influence, and that rings true in the electronic/indie/pop sound on display. The most memorable (or perhaps most poppy) material by those bands may have been fairly light in texture and melodic with it, but it also had a sharpness; something to cut through and ensure the music didn't pass you by, and so too it is here. 'Like A Mirage' also borrows from synth-pop quite heavily, and not the overly smooth variety. We're given a beat that crunches and snaps, and stabbing synths that pierce through, creating a contrast to those vocals and the spiralling guitar. This leaves you with a song that is soft and smooth on the interior, but has a barbed exterior that makes it stick in the mind. Oh, and the fact that it's bloody fantastic doesn't do it any harm either.
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