BACK MAGIC "Chorus Line to Hell" LP -- Out now!!!

Back Magic at work.

You blink your eyes and two years go by without a new post ... just like that!  Holy crap.

Let's not dwell on the sad explanations for that unfortunate spell of quietude.  Behind the scenes here we've all been extremely busy doing our best to keep various projects moving forward, at whatever rate seemed possible at the time.

And so at long last we present the 9th Milvia Son release, a truly excellent LP by Back Magic.  This one was a long time coming.  We'd first stumbled across Nick Hoffman's Pilgrim Talk label back in 2010 or so ... tipped off to something or the other in the Fusetron catalog, if memory serves correctly.  We ordered up a bunch of titles and a few qualities stood out immediately.  First, the artwork was consistently appealing in a strangely macabre way.  Second, the sonics were extremely diverse, albeit bent towards the abstract/noise in many cases.  On one extreme, there was the brilliant and bizarre mini CD "The Raven" containing nothing more than Poe's entire poem (longer than you remember) sung with verve by Christopher Wiman and backed up by a tight little combo [on closer examination, this seems to be have been released by a sister label, "Ghost and Son" -- the mystery deepens].

On the other hand, there was the Psychophagi LP which was as perfect an example of an electroacoustic headscratcher that you're ever likely to find (there might actually be recordings of headscratching on the LP -- who can say?).  On top of that, there were myriad lathe cuts, 7"s, cassettes, zines CDRs, all of them relatively cheap and all of them limited and most of the older ones now out-of-print (the Pilgrim Talk train doesn't seem destined to derail anytime soon, however, so now's as good as any time to get on board ...).

Psychophagi LP cover.

One of the cassettes that arrived from Chicago (where the label was based until its recent move to Oregon) was a short gem entitled "Dream Lover" by a new band named Back Magic.  Most of the carefully constructed original pieces were almost medieval in their sparseness and simple melodies.  But instead of recorder and harp, the short tunes were played on drums and electric guitar, fuzz-free and without bombast (the major exception being a desperate sounding cover of 'Paranoid' to conclude the tape).  And we decided then that the best way to ensure that we hear more of this band was to contact Pilgrim Talk and figure out how to get a bona fide LP out there.  The rest is history!

Here's a bit of the promo blurb:  While the line-up and sonics have varied over Back Magic’s brief history, the relative constants thus far are Hair EXP on guitar and vocals, and Terror Trans on drums.  This LP features just the core duo doing what they do very well indeed … which occasionally sounds like a proto-embryonic version of The Great Society if they replaced Grace with some chanting monks, and other times sounds like a couple burned-out monks getting their rocks on after stumbling across an amp and some drums.  The album is very much in the vein of their “Dream Lover” cassette, described by Byron Coley as a “curiously strong” recording of “a guitar, a drum, and a lung playing skeletal miniatures from inside a ghost garage”, and by Ed Pinsent as embodying “a shrill plangency that makes you want to cry and shudder at the same time.”  Like many haunted recordings, this one finishes with a question mark that will leave you wondering what the hell just happened.  Limited to 250 copies with cover and insert art by Nick Hoffman, beautifully silk-screened in silver ink by Alan Sherry. 

The Back Magic "Chorus Line to Hell" LP is $12 postpaid.  Ordering details here.

Or you can get copies from Pilgrim Talk, Fusetron, Revolver, or any decent record store ... while supplies last.