Earlier this year, we formed Magnetic Island as an outlet for the collaborative work we’d been wanting to do with friends, acquaintances and musicians we’ve admired from afar. The goal is to get a bunch of personalities in a room and see what comes out after first improvising, then refining, and lastly recording sounds. The group will be ever-shifting in its membership and identity, although one constant guiding principle will thread through: keep experimenting! Unusual instrumentation or vocal lines or time signature shifts — whatever, just as long as everything feels necessary.
Also, we’ll make music available frequently, instead of letting it sit on a shelf for six months or a year. Create the song, get it recorded, share it. That will mean, mostly, an emphasis on singles and EPs. Even if a lot of people are still working under the misapprehension that it’s only the full-length that matters.*
We’re throwing out whatever “rulebook” supposedly exists; music was never meant to be written according to rules, and it shouldn’t be shared or written about according to rules, either.
We’ve put out two singles and a demo so far, and our debut EP arrives Sept. 21 on a label that is also being run collaboratively, Disregard Records [more about this in a future post]. The singles and demo are available as free downloads. The EP will be available as a download and on limited edition cassette tape. We’ll share more about why we chose tape for this release in another post soon.
In the meantime, check out the new website, listen to the tunes, and drop us a line if you have questions or comments: magisland @ gmail.com
*This isn’t meant to imply that the full-length album isn’t still a legitimate means of sharing music (it would be hard to tally how many long-players have made a lasting impact on our lives) — just that it isn’t the only one.