MAGIC WANDS – Magic, Love and Dreamy music from LA!
1. Please introduce the band to our readers and describe your vision about your music.
Dexy: Hello, did you ever have a vivid or lucid dream that you never wanted to wake up from? Its kind of like that.
Chris: Our idea for the band from the beginning was to only have songs about three things, “magic” “love” or “dreams.”
2. You have a new album called ‘ILLUMINATE’, could you describe the process of composing and recording?
Dexy: Our set up for this album was pretty simple we just sit down with a drum machine, a keyboard and guitars and Chris or myself come up with an idea and expand on it from there.
Chris: We also spent about a week or so just playing electric guitars not plugged in and making up chords and words we liked. Then I’d usually make a beat for it with the drum machine, and we’d just kind of take turns recording parts for it. We did it all ourselves in a makeshift home studio with some old music gear from the 80s that a friend gave to us. After we got most of the music we’d sing the song once and just leave it. Then we’d wait a while, listen to it to get used to the song and then come back to it a week or so later and do the finished vocal recordings, so we had time to hear it back and see if had any better ideas. After that we’d usually just wait another little of time and listen and see if we had another ideas for music we’d want to add, and if not, we’d just mix it down to the final song. We did the whole album just the two of us so we could get things done pretty fast because we both know what kind of sounds we like and our vision for the band.
3. Is there any special concept behind the album?
Dexy: We just made a record we wanted to make and hope people enjoy it, the concept is love and fantasy and raising your consciousness outside the
confines of reality.
Chris: Yeah we wanted it to have be songs that we liked to listen to, and we like songs that have like a “neutral positive” idea to them and with the music we just felt like some faster songs and music like our first record was the mood we were in.
4. How cool or uncool is to live and play music in Los Angeles? Does
the size of the city affect the competition among the bands?
Dexy; LA is still one of my favorite cities, the size hasn’t much impact because the music scenes here aren’t too massive, I don’t really see bands in competition with each other most seem to support each other.
Chris: Yeah it’s such a big city, I don’t feel any competition with anyone because all the bands are so different, and for us we just do what we do regardless of what anyone else is doing. The cool thing about L.A. is that it’s very inspiring in that you can go out for the day and go to the beach and have lunch at some old Hollywood restaurant or visit all these metaphysical book stores or go to some new age expo convention, there’s just a lot of interesting places and not to mention there’s probably the largest concentration of the weirdest people in the world that live here, so you get a lot perspectives it’s hard to find anywhere else.
5. You have chosen a futuristic production for your mixing which is similar to the 80s Pop sound. Were you involved in the process of mastering/mixing of the album?
Dexy: Chris did all the mixing and mastering and I chime in with ideas, we produced, wrote and recorded the album ourselves at home. It kind of made its self really. I think we have fine tuned our ears to the kinds of sounds and tones we both like and like to mix it with some more fuzzed out and others more clean sounding.
Chris: Yes we did everything ourselves from beginning to end, writing, recording, producing, mixing and mastering, even the actual release to online we all did. We’ve made records a lot of different ways with different people and learned a lot in the past, but now we know what we like and how to get the sounds we want on our own. Usually we’ll go for a ride in the morning, then record all day, then cook dinner, then record for a little while longer after that. It was very easy and came together fast.
6. What type of musical gear did you use for the album and were there any participating guest musicians?
Dexy: Vintage synths, guitars, drum machine, old casios, rolands.. effects pedals, no guest on this album but maybe the next one.
Chris: Yeah the main keyboards we used were some of those 80s kids Casio keyboards with the big orange buttons on them, an old Roland d50 from the 80s which is like a Lionel Richie keyboard or something, some off brand guitars I found online…I think the fanciest piece of gear we used was a 1991 “Ensoniq DP4” our friend gave us, which is a big heavy box that does special effects… I don’t even know if I used it right, I couldn’t be bothered to read the manual, but we made it work.
7. Which is the concept behind the album’s cover artwork?
Dexy: That’s a still shot of Gracie who was in our Angel Dust video and when i was watching it i screen grabbed that shot and it looked so stunning really capturing the vibe of what some of the songs feel like so we decided to use it as the cover.
8. Your music has been remixed by The XX and Crystal Fighters, did you like their musical approach?
Dexy, yeah both bands did some cool remixes i like how The XX slowed down Warrior and Crystal Fighters turned Black Magic into a dance track.
Chris: Yeah they were both cool, I liked both those remixes.
9. Do you have any plans for the post Covid-19 period?
Dexy: Just to travel again and tour, play shows..missing that stuff alot.
Chris: Yeah we are looking at heading back to Europe for shows as soon as possible, with an extended tour of the U.K. We’ve been offered some festivals to play so a lot of it will be based around those.
10. How do you adjust yourself to the current status of the digital music industry?
Dexy: it is what is it, I like it specifically to connect with people around the world in one click and get our music out there.
Chris: I love it, I think it’s better than it’s ever been. You get more control of everything you do, you can release music anytime you want. I also have a million side projects and release music all the time, and I think it couldn’t be a better time to be someone making music now. I mean, if I decide I want to make an album of ambient music for unicorns under a weird new age artist name I can spend an afternoon recording it at home on my laptop, then make an insane album cover, and have it sent off to a distributor that night, and have it released live online to every major digital platform around the world for free by the end of the week… and if for some reason it gets picked up on a big Spotify playlist or something, I’m also getting paid for it. I mean, I literally do things like that all the time actually. So it’s just a good time to be really creative, I think it’s great.
Interview photos by Sylvia Leigh.
Keep up with Magic Wands
Website | Bandcamp | Twitter | Instagram | Facebook | Soundcloud | YouTube | Apple Music | Spotify
‘Illuminate’ on Bandcamp https://magic-wands.bandcamp.com/album/illuminate-2
Spotify https://open.spotify.com/album/6Lfz8WLcyYBK0DDwGey018
‘Blue Cherry’ Bandcamp https://magic-wands.bandcamp.com/track/blue-cherry
Soundcloud https://soundcloud.com/magic-wands/blue-cherry
‘Angel Dust’ https://youtu.be/xLkV-3rD-Io
