The Magic Gang

The Magic Gang are championing a strong work ethic in music and sticking at something long enough to improve beyond what you thought was possible. 4 or 5 years in the making, the once ‘slacker rock’ labelled foursome’s debut album is upon us. Jack Kaye, Kristian Smith, Angus Taylor and Paeris Giles talk us through staying true to themselves and their stadium filling intentions…

Illustration by Valat Ampavat

Q: When we first interviewed you, you said something like, “ we keep getting called slacker rock, but can you stop because we work really hard on these songs guys…”

Kristian: Yeah it should have been called, ‘Tries really hard rock’.

Jack: Yeah, we never tried to claim that, we always wanted people to know that we were trying to be professionals…

Q: You guys have been together for ages! Why has it taken so long to release an album?

Jack: Part of the reason is because we didn’t get signed for a long time

Angus: For three years we were too alternative to sign to a major and too pop to sign to an indie. Then luckily with Warner and Yala! They came along and were up for it.

Jack: And by then we’d already gained a live following, so it was less of a risk for a label to take.

Q: If you listen to your new record it’s very pop heavy, track after track, you can play this at any time and dip in and out of it.

Jack: It’s full on, with this album we had to put every big tune we have on it. Every tune where people sing along live had to go on there and we felt like it was the right thing to do and so the next one I think will have a bit more of a range.

Paeris: It’s like a blank canvas at this point

Jack: And actually the later songs on this album are slower and a little bit more personal, they feel a little bit more important and a little bit more real. I feel like that’s a sign of where we’re going with song writing, I don’t think we’re necessarily that interested in writing a load more songs that are poppy, we’ll maybe feel a little bit more brave to start doing things that feel a little bit more emotive and more sincere now.

Q: You are a feel good band though…

Jack: We do have a certain formula to write those types of songs and it’s always really enjoyable, it’s always nice to do it but I think when the band first started we maybe didn’t have the courage or the confidence.

Paeris: When you look at the album as half new and half old (songs) there’s a certain purity to the older songs that we weren’t necessarily aware of when we were writing them, it’s just what we did together in our way of writing songs and the new ones are maybe more exciting and a little bit more nuanced, where we have a better idea of what we want to do.

Jack: We’re not the type of band to sit there and start writing really hard to decipher, 11 minute jams, we’re not that type of band at all. It’s always gonna be concise pop songs with a chorus and a nice vocal melody… That’s if we ever get to make a second album…

Kristian: We’ve definitely got enough tunes…So like a true collective?

Q: As far as artwork goes, this album cover is the first time you’ve used a photo isn’t it?

Jack: Paeris makes all the decisions as far as artwork.

Paeris: When we were doing the EPs, I always liked the idea of our music being joyous and quite indie for all intents and purposes but then you have an artwork that doesn’t suggest anything about what you’re gonna hear, but then with the album it’s like, this is what we look like, you might have an idea, if you don’t you still won’t really know that much about what its gonna sound like, its just four guys.

Q: Can I just touch on the fact that you really don’t like naming things…

Kristian: We’re too scared of expressing ourselves

Jack: It’s because we’re scared of offending each other, we don’t wanna suggest some bold name, we’re all so invested in it and we all write the music together, it feels weird for one person to be like, “I wanna name it this because it represents how I feel…”

Angus: It’s deliberate, it’s completely deliberate. It ties in with the artwork in the same way that it’s very minimalist, it doesn’t give much away, you can’t pigeonhole it straight away.

Jack: If we named the first album something that was just a throwaway title which a lot of people do, it would just get lost in the ether… I just see it as a bit of a pointless thing to do.

Kristian: I always liked with the first Black Flag album, for example it was ‘first four Eps’. I like that nondescript way of presenting the music.

Q: What’s your process for writing the songs?

Jack: It actually varies quite massively, it’ll either be one of us will have something, a part or maybe a whole song and then we take that to the band and everyone chimes in, not just with writing their own parts but also structuring it.

Jack: Year, or we can literally all start a song together, or sometimes two people might get together, like me and Kris might get together and write a song together from start to finish, so it varies.

Q: Was there a particularly creative period when you made a lot of songs in one go?

Jack: Right at the start I’d say we were particularly prolific and that was when we had nothing to do but write songs, in our third year of uni maybe. I remember a particular period when we would sit in the lounge and just hammer them out and then go down to the basement and just play them.

Angus: Golden years, that was formative.

Jack: It’s funny because that was four or five years ago and we thought we’d written the album then, so we would literally sit there and be like, “this will be track 4”. Little did we know it was gonna be another four years…

Kristian: We thought all the tunes were like fucking perfect, like, “this is so deep, this is perfect”. The reality is each of us also make a lot of crap, not crap but a lot of stuff.

Jack: What keeps me up at night is the idea that we might have boyed off really good tunes, like “ah fuck, what if that was the one that was gonna get us the Honda advert!” Maybe not Honda cos that’s Peep Show. Yeah you have tunes where its like, “what if that was it?” What if George Harrison wrote some of ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’ and then was like, “nah, it’s a bit shit”. It’d be horrible.

Kristian: What I think is that you write the same song over an over again until you get the best version of it.

Angus: It is frustrating being at this point and having so many songs, we’ve got enough for like two or three other albums, whether or not they’d be good albums I don’t know.

Jack: Could be a ‘Be Here Now’ though.

Q: So are some of the songs you’ve got left over going to be the next album?

Jack: We’re too obnoxious for that, we think the newest thing is the best thing at the time so we’re never gonna be like, “let’s just go back to the bank”. We’re too arrogant for that, It’ll be whatever we’ve written nearest the deadline of recording will be the second album.

Angus: But then even in the last two or three months, between us there’s like ten new songs.

Q: There’s gonna be a lot of lost music...

Angus: B-Sides and rarities…

Kristian: When we go back in to record more music I’d like to see us try new shit that we haven’t tried before…

Angus: I’d like to do an RnB record.

Kristian: Pure synth, autotune.

Angus: Just bass drum and keyboards.

Q: Is it still all about The Beatles and The Beach Boys for you guys?

Kristian: I love those guys man. I’ve had to make myself not listen to The Beatles anymore so that I can appreciate other music.

Jack: The Beatles are the main one, I think we like the idea that it’s four people coming together with different vibes, four characters and they’re really interesting people, even just to watch on video. Even if you watch videos of them recording, it’s fascinating. Four different voices together.

Q: When we last spoke about the band’s intentions the term was ‘stadium fillers’, what are your intentions now?

Jack: Still stadium fillers

Kristian: My intention is to make people shit themselves and make them think that they actually need to start getting good at trying to write songs again. I read this thing by Quincy Jones earlier and he said the reason why a lot of music sucks these days is because people don’t spend enough time getting good at what they do, so my ambition is to convince others to spend a little bit more time on what it is they’re trying to do and try and create some longevity. My idea is to encourage people to work harder at what they’re doing and stick at it a bit longer. To inspire a new generation of kids to learn their chords and scales.

Jack: We’re not trying to be rockstars in any way, we’re trying to make it more about the songs. I think we realised very quickly that we weren’t going to be “cool”. Our aesthetic is that we look like we’re having fun on stage and it’s incidental but I think that’s something to be quite proud of…

Words by Sam Ford and Josh Whettingsteel