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Acquired knowledge defines Magenta pithily. “Neo-prog, feminine singer,” Robert Reed laughs wryly. However over greater than twenty years, a few of Magenta’s seven earlier albums have undermined mentioned obtained knowledge considerably, most notably 2017’s We Are Legend.
Full with dystopian art work, that album was arguably essentially the most radical of Magenta’s profession. It was a significantly extra dense – and to some, comparatively impenetrable – launch. Against this the band’s new album, Masters Of Phantasm, is a return to the sound for which Magenta are finest recognized. It’s additionally very probably their strongest ever launch and a deliberate stylistic shift from We Are Legend.
Reed has beforehand overtly acknowledged that he struggled with each confidence and artistic inspiration main as much as … Legend, feeling that he’d exhausted Magenta musically. In consequence, that album took Magenta in a decidedly completely different route.
“I get actually bored if I do one type on a regular basis and the identical factor over and over,” Reed explains. “That’s why I do different tasks like Chimpan A, Kompendium and Sanctuary. With We Are Legend, I couldn’t discover a manner in. Ultimately I believed we’d do one thing we hadn’t accomplished earlier than, which was embrace electronica sounds and loops and get a little bit of a tougher edge – stuff I’d prevented as a result of I didn’t assume it was us.”
Reed stays happy with …Legend and factors out that some followers cite it as their favorite Magenta album. “I believed I’d actually push the envelope and do one thing that individuals wouldn’t count on. We went to an excessive with the electronica, the longer songs and darker stuff. I actually loved doing it. To me, it was profitable.”
Nevertheless there’s little question that …Legend proved a cathartic expertise, smoothing the best way for Masters Of Phantasm. “After …Legend I used to be all for getting the Moog, the Taurus pedals and the Mellotrons out once more,” Reed enthuses. “Over the past couple of albums, I hadn’t actually indulged in ‘retro prog’. I fancied going again to the start of Magenta and what the band was all about after we began.”
When Magenta first emerged on the flip of the millennium, prog was removed from flavour of the month. “It was such a swear phrase. No one needed to be a prog band. It was the worst factor you may be labelled as.” Defiantly, Reed proceeded to make “essentially the most prog album he may”, specifically Magenta’s 2001 debut, Revolutions.
That album and its significantly extra polished successor, 2004’s Seven, firmly established the band, whereas concurrently benefiting from an absence of viewers expectations. “There was an innocence on Revolutions and Seven. We didn’t have any followers, so we didn’t have anyone to please.”
In pleasing themselves by making the music that they needed to make, Magenta quickly acquired a fanbase that has remained loyal to them subsequently. However success comes with a worth. “If you’ve obtained followers, there’s stress and a niggle behind your thoughts saying you can’t do some issues since you don’t need to upset the followers an excessive amount of. Folks decide you extra and that innocence goes a bit.”
Having taken a few of the band’s viewers exterior their aural consolation zone with …Legend, Reed determined that with Masters Of Phantasm he would make the album that he needed to listen to stylistically: “I used to be desperately attempting to get again that writing innocence of doing it for me.”
However the close to 17-minute title monitor, the hour-long new launch zooms by. Sure, stylistically the album harks again to Seven specifically, but it surely’s a extra completed and superbly organized report. It’s additionally extremely accessible, the results of Reed’s pop background.
“Earlier than Magenta I spent 10 years attempting to be a pop star. That almost killed me and Tina,” Reed says, referring to his time alongside Magenta vocalist Christina Sales space in Trippa. “I’d had sufficient of being informed what to do by A&R folks. Magenta was a cleaning of my soul after being a slave to the pop trade for a decade, sticking two fingers as much as everybody and saying I’ll do no matter I need now.”
Whereas pop music could also be anathema to some prog followers, it’s additionally one of many secrets and techniques of Magenta’s success. “In pop, the music is king,” Reed states. “With Magenta, the music comes first and you then put the window dressing round it. But it surely’s nonetheless a music at coronary heart. That’s why Sure, Genesis and Pink Floyd are large – they wrote nice songs. Another bands are technically superb and musicians love them, however by no means offered any data as a result of they by no means had any songs. At present, the bands that do effectively are those that write good songs.”
And purely and easily, Masters Of Phantasm incorporates six excellent songs. As Reed factors out, all of them comply with the basic development of a verse, a bridge and a memorable refrain. There’s then loads of instrumental embellishment, such that even the album’s shortest monitor, Snow, exceeds six minutes.
“However you will get away with that, as a result of on this album you’ve obtained the goodwill of the nice songs. On We Are Legend, I used to be attempting to write down otherwise and break all the principles that I’d set myself. This new album is accessible as a result of it’s going again to what Magenta have been about on Seven.” It’s certainly no coincidence that Seven stays Magenta’s best-selling album.
Extra surprisingly, given how cohesive Masters Of Phantasm is stylistically and sonically, a few of the music on it dates again a decade, with solely the title monitor and A Reward From God particularly written for the album. “With the music Masters Of Phantasm I used to be on a mission to make the proggiest monitor I may,” Reed confesses.
Two of the album’s indubitable highlights – the catchy Attain For The Moon and the light, emotive The Rose – have been recorded and demoed on the time of …Legend. “We had nearly completed these songs however I believed they sounded too prog, not trendy sufficient, and have been going again an excessive amount of to the previous. They have been fully alien to what we have been attempting to do. So as a result of I needed to shock folks and do one thing fully completely different, I put them apart whereas we have been ending the final report. Once we got here to this album I performed them and realised that they have been actually good songs.”
Equally, opening monitor Bela had sat on Reed’s exhausting drive for a decade with the keyboardist failing to discover a appropriate residence for it. Having beforehand demoed it with himself singing, he realised its full potential as soon as Sales space demoed vocals for it. Snow had been equally homeless for round 5 years.
Whereas Masters… is musically cohesive, like Seven it advantages moreover from a unifying theme, though that significantly postdated the writing of the music. “The music at all times comes first,” Reed continues. “Lyrics are simply not my factor, therefore my love for Mike Oldfield and instrumental music. It’s all in regards to the melody and the chords for me – they’re what float my boat. Lyrics are secondary. Shoot me down in flames for saying that, particularly in prog!”
Reed has at all times relied on his brother Steve to provide lyrics. “I don’t go close to the lyrics. They’re not my division and I simply can’t get my head round them. I do discover once I hear a corny or unhealthy lyric, although!”
As a substitute, Robert Reed relishes having an idea to write down music round. For Masters Of Phantasm, the Reed brothers alighted on film stars from the Common horror movies of the Nineteen Thirties and Forties and subsequent Hammer horror movies of the Fifties, Sixties and Seventies.
“Steve and I used to spend each Saturday night time watching the Horror Double Payments on BBC2,” Reed explains. “Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee are my performing heroes and I simply beloved the look of the movies, particularly the Hammer movies which appear to be work. We have been fanatical about them.”
With the lyrics for Bela impressed by the lifetime of Bela Lugosi and written a couple of years subsequent to the music’s music, the brothers determined to make a horror actor the topic of every monitor on the album. “The actual prog factor could be one music about Dracula and one other about Frankenstein and so forth. However that was a horrendous thought and all of the worst issues about prog!”
As a substitute they selected to focus every music on the non-public lives of six protagonists, with Lugosi, Cushing and Lee featured alongside Vincent Value, Lon Chaney Jr and Ingrid Pitt. As Reed factors out, parts of the again tales of all six have a level of universality. However there’s additionally an overarching idea to the album and a similarity with the world of musicians.
“With actors, you see them up on the display screen or out at premiers and assume they’re
so assured. However in actual life, most of them are frail. It’s the identical with musicians. To some extent, we’re all masters of phantasm. You get on stage and folks see this cocky vanity. However once you come off stage, you’re as frail and as open to not liking criticism as anybody else.”
The album’s art work options some necessary visible references too. “The quilt reveals this actor and varied demons within the mirror. And the typewriter is supposed as a nod and a wink at reviewers and journalists who can destroy folks.”
With the prevalence of social media, it’s not simply journalists who proffer opinions, welcome or in any other case, about inventive endeavours. Reed has skilled this to his price, principally from his Mike Oldfield-inspired Sanctuary albums, regarded by some Oldfield obsessives as sacrilegious.
“With social media everybody’s obtained an opinion and there’s no safety. Whereas earlier than you’d have three or 4 critics and simply needed to climate that storm, now you’ve obtained hundreds of thousands: everybody’s a critic. Musicians should not constructed to take criticism, however once you’re placing music out, one thing so private to you, you’ve obtained to be ready for it.”
Reed clearly stays shocked by a few of the response to his Sanctuary albums. “The extent of abuse I obtained personally was on one other stage. There have been such violent and private assaults. I hadn’t killed anybody – I solely made a report! However you’ve obtained to face there like a boxer together with his fingers tied behind his again, as a result of in case you have interaction or attempt to struggle again, that’s even worse.”
Fortunately, it’s extremely unlikely that the wonderful Masters Of Phantasm will lead to
a torrent of abuse raining down on Reed and his Magenta cohorts.
This text initially appeared in Prog 111.
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