The press bio for rising London quartet RIP Magic doesn’t have any words. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t say anything. The group of four multidisciplinary artists — drummer Beth Boswell-Knight, audio-visual artist Felix Bayley-Higgins, DJ and sound designer Marco Pini, and bassist Pedro Takahashi — opted to use visual language to describe their band’s warped, technicolored world.
The Dropbox file of images include kids exploring a neon bouncy castle, stills from filmmaker Sissel Morell Dargis' hot air balloon documentary Balomania, cartoon devils, rainbow bursts of light, balloons from the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, Kim Kardashian with a sunglasses sunburn, Pope Leo XIV holding a vintage baseball bat on an airplane, and a facepainted image of Garfield. Their debut album 1,2,3 — which came out Friday, a little over a year after the release of their earliest singles "Loot" and "Dox" — is an amalgamation of bizarre samples, gauzy rhythmic trances, fuzzy vocals, and hypnotic noise. It evokes the kaleidoscopic grandiosity of groups like the Chemical Brothers or Animal Collective.
Over the past year, they’ve attracted admirers including Tyler The Creator (who was onboard when all they had was demos), LCD Soundsystem’s James Murphy (who produced their single “5words"), and Tame Impala (who they opened for in UK arenas this past spring). Whether it’s their unexpected sound choices or business pivots, the foursome is boldly creating a new kind of sound in our age of overstimulation. It’s the sound of rotting in your car on a building summer’s day: sort of sluggish and disorienting, but also strangely comforting.
That’s evident on the low-riding tracks “11:30” and “Rock,” where Boswell-Knight’s drumming and Takahashi’s bass lock into a magical (pun somewhat intended) synchronicity. Across 1,2,3, samples take infinite detours, with buried screams and melted conversations mingling with laser synths, acrylic guitars, and jaunty drums. I couldn’t help but let out a laugh when I recognized the sample of Lissie introducing her “Pursuit Of Happiness” cover at the Great Escape 2010 that closes out album highlight “Loverboy.” It’s a strange and fun inclusion that doesn’t seem to nod at any profound meaning.
I sat down with the band a couple of weeks before the album’s release. They were tired after a long day consumed by a photo shoot, but our conversation quickly turned to the world they’ve built around RIP Magic. Listen to 1,2,3 and read our conversation below.
Is it hard to balance your sound live with all the samples? I'm curious on your approach to intentionality regarding what comes through very clear and what's more obscure. Even on the album, there’s a fuzzy element to the vocals, where it purposefully sounds like you can't really tell what is a sample and what's not, or maybe the vocals feel closer connected to the samples because of that veil of noise.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
