Night Tapes talk realities, idealities, and ‘portals//polarities’ deluxe release: “What you resist, persists”
“I’m just a pebble in the sea. I am nothing, I know nothing,” sings Estonian vocalist Iiris Vesik on ‘Swim’, the latest track from electronic-shoegaze band Night Tapes.
The sentiment, the recognition that the human pursuit of power, knowledge, and wisdom is an ultimately futile one, seems to bear no weight on the London-based trio. On the contrary, our conversation traverses celestial bodies, German philosophers, and postmodern writing practices.
They might be exhausted from endless touring, but it’s evident that Vesik, Max Doohan, and Sam Richards are meticulous, conscientious musicians, and there’s a reason for every drone, wail, and shimmer up their sleeve.
The three friends, under the Night Tapes banner, have been at this for some time, forming from late-night jam sessions which met the world in their first official release, 2019’s EP Dream Forever in Glorious Stereo. This makes the deluxe release of their debut album, portals//polarities, all the more important: at last, a final body of work. The album, surrounded by a visual field of hypnotic blue, disturbed only by distorted television pixelation and blurry static shuddering, charges through immersive, thick electronic soundscapes captured through both analogue and digital methods.
On top of it all, Vesik’s soaring falsetto explores a kind of ego-death as she traverses the hallmark hurdles of the modern condition: online personas, algorithms, the widening gap between us and those in power, the duality of consciousness. From the other end of a suitably glitchy Zoom call, Night Tapes take Far Out through it all.
Fresh, familiar, friendship: Night Tapes have more to say
The deluxe editions of portals/polarities finish with two brand-new additions to the stack, ‘Swim’, released earlier this month as a single, and ‘The Crest of the Wave’.
The first sees a committed extension of their previous investigation into the human condition, punctuated by a swerve-off-the-road ending which admits to faults, flaws and festering failures: “‘Swim’ encapsulates a lot of polarities in itself: Extreme hope, and then an understanding of the darker side of things. It’s about accepting duaity, and not resisting it. What you resist persists,” the band explains.
Ever the inventors, the trio had barely kicked their feet up after recording had finished for their debut when ‘Swim’ slipped upstream, adding, “We had a couple songs that were bubbling after we finished the album, which we didn’t want on the next project, but lived in the same world as the portals//polarities album.”
While ‘Swim’ might’ve been brainstormed beneath the Portugal sun, the apocalyptic music video was filmed some 1,000 miles away at Dungeness Power Station at the very edge of the UK, where “It was a totally barren place in a beautiful, rugged way, and there was an intense wind. We were in the elements all day.”
As the band grapples with the stark forces of nature, the lyrical tension accumulates: “Turn your shadow into a pet,” Vesik’s opening whisper demands of us. We cannot continue to neglect or ignore our faults: We have to recognise and accept them.
Beneath the stirring wind, maroon ruddiness descends upon the musicians, as they warn, “Sometimes we all miss the mark: So have I, but I can choose to be here right now”. It would’ve been a compromising place to finish the new release: “Swim is intense. ‘Crest of the Wave’ is more trying to soothe, calm, and reassure,” Vesik shares.
Here, then, our album closer is ‘Crest of the Wave’, which was an earlier demo made by Doohan, a one-take song “sent to a friend who was really going through a difficult time”. Its intimacy is startling, and for the most part, as Doohan alone sings, Slowdive style, reassuring the friend of their worthy place in the universe: “You’re making a difference,” he insists, above synths soft like a hug.
The two final additions are complete opposites, portals into either end of one another’s stratosphere: In Vesik’s words, “If ‘Swim’ is breathing in, ‘Crest of the Wave’ is breathing out”.
Making methods out of meaning
Two conflicting stories: A song shot out of the compressed time of decompression, and the long-lost demo of a personal consolation, and portals//polarities is complete, but the deluxe album doesn’t just end here, as Night Tapes have slotted in a remastered version of 2024 fan-favourite, ‘To Be Free’.
The song, which previously stood alone as a single, belongs on the deluxe album precisely because of the story told through the frictive magnetism of the new offerings, as the band stages the tension between real and imagined evil. And finally, ‘To Be Free’ makes sense: “To be free, baby, electric in your realm, endless possibility, of us in synchronicity”.
The recontextualisation means more to the band than just lines on a tracklist: “There’s this one quote that always haunts me,” Vesik muses, impressively whittling off a Johann Wolfgang von Goethe quotation, “A confusion of the real with the ideal never goes unpunished“.
It may be a quote about marriage, love, and fantasy, but Vesik and co use it to think through the dangers of waxing lyrical and theoretical about ideas that only ever transpire through actions, with Vesik admitting, “There are a lot of cerebral thoughts in this album. But I don’t think you can really make something that is explorative if you already know the answers.”
portals//polarities might present a confident dissection of the band’s personal ethics, but Night Tapes haven’t a clue about the real answers: “We’re just trying to figure out how to live”. As they deliver their songs to crowds ever increasing in size, the lyrics are liable to change. We’d expect nothing less from a band in constant flux, whose flexibility and elasticity press through their sonic terrain and out to the listener.
As such, their lyrics become the house for the ideas to find a home within: “That’s the magic of writing. You’re making methods of meaning. When you write, you’re taking agency over your situation, or at least you’re exploring it,” Vesik explains, becoming her own philosopher, “Sometimes, when it stays in your head, everything loops around, and you can’t really make sense of things.”
Sounds as dynamic and tactile as theirs are evidently the product of chameleonic artists. “I don’t know how long I can hold on in a circle of what is left of me and you,” Vesik confesses on the enchanting ‘Leave It All Behind, Mike’. Letting go isn’t seen as an acknowledgement of defeat but a liberatory leap into the unknown, and a testament to the band’s versatility.
Frequencies of the future
If Night Tapes twist away from master narratives within a song’s own logical circuit, is there any hope in predicting where they may go next?
Often, the band remains aloof even unto themselves, until a song threatens to burst through the dam. “We’ve become more direct with the speed in which we make songs these days,” Richards shares, “The freshness of an idea: The faster you can capture that, the more of that special energy remains in the song.” Their upcoming songwriting sessions in Wyoming are likely to yield plenty of this special energy.
For all our talk of semantics, portals//polarities is an album that demands to be felt; at their headlining show at London’s Village Underground last year, Vesik joined the audience for a song or two, and demanded we finish with our hands in the air, human trees persisting in spite of the industrial metropolis; the shows are transportive, delicious affairs.
Thankfully, Night Tapes have had plenty of opportunities to portal into and across different venues, having just finished an “inspiring” arena tour with American alternative rock band The Neighbourhood. Each night, as they watched thousands of phone lights shoot upwards to the sky from the sidelines, the trio learned what music, outside of their heads, can really do. In Vesik’s words, “You meet in a certain frequency, and we roll together in that frequency”.
I’m primed to ask more, push for a detailed picture of a painting still in formation, but the summer day beats down on us, and my laptop quickly becomes furious at the length of our conversation; it lets out tiny industrial yelps that, according to the band, sound as if I have a young puppy trapped in the casing. We laugh, but the overwroughtness is a familiar symbol for the overworked industry, underfunded and over-expending itself.
Rest assured, Night Tapes are adamant not to rush themselves into burnout territory. “Maybe this is not how we’re supposed to actually work, you know: What is the machine making us do? How is our inner machine manufacturing?” Versik questions pointedly, as my laptop bleats once more.
She’s right, of course. The climate is boiling to a life-altering degree, while the celestial bodies predict doom and gloom on the horizon. All sides outside the self point to an air of destruction. There’s nothing left to do but give in to forces larger than yourself: “I’m declaring myself in Mercury retrograde,” Richards laughs, a hint of seriousness among the giggle, “I’m working improperly right now. I’m broken”.
We joke, because it couldn’t be further from the truth, for Night Tapes will soon shoot off again for several shows across the pond, before scooting back homeward for Brighton and Manchester Psych Festival. After that? New music. Perhaps another ego death. Anything is possible.
