Piano Magic, the project of British guitarist Glen Johnson and a revolving cast of collaborators, debuted with the EP
Make Mine Music
Wrong FrenchFind Piano Magic discography, albums and singles on AllMusic. Piano Magic is a London-based indie-pop band dedicated to a bleak, atmospheric sound. The 10th official album by London-based Anglo-French coldwave group, Piano Magic. It's difficult to know what propels Piano Magic. Here's a group that despite releasing over 30 records since their debut in 1996 have managed to sidestep anything resembling accolades. Active since 2012, the band is signed with Latium, Sony, and RCA Records, releasing their debut studio album Don't Kill the Magic in 2014, their second studio album Primary Colours in 2016, and their third studio album Expectations in 2018. They are best known for their hit single ' Rude ', which charted at No. 1 in several countries worldwide.
(iChe, 1996), a soundtrack for a Rachael Leigh performance that contained Wrong French, a naive female recitation over floating organ drones and tiny electronic turbulences, and Glen Johnson's claustrophobic instrumental of industrial music General Electric With Fairy Lights (that would remain one of their experimental peaks). The eight-minute Wintersport/ Cross-Country
(iChe, 1997), with a detached childish voice (Hazel Burfitt) repeating a nursery rhyme over a non-existent arrangement, and with a surreal coda of natural and found sounds and electronic loops that was basically a mini-concerto of musique concrete (devised by Glen Johnson, Paul Tornbohm and Dominic Chennell), backed with Martin Cooper's surrealistic chamber sonata of Magnetic North, as well as Johnson's instrumental For Engineers A (Wurlitzer Jukebox, 1997), an atonal carillon propelled by a strong rhythmic base, were characterized by dreamy electronic sounds performed on cheap keyboards and fragile melodies held together by simple structures, something halfway between the 'bedroom pop' of Young Marble Giants and Brian Eno's futuristic-pop vignettes. Popular Mechanics (Che, 1997), recorded with three American expatriates, illustrated Glen Johnson's aesthetic principles across a broad range of musical structures. After the frantic drum'n'bass instrumental overture Metal Coffee (Ezra Feinberg on drums), the ghostly electronic noise of Everything Works Beautifully and the synthesized miniature (0.53), Johnson laid down the melodramatic drone of Amongst Russian Lathes and Metal Curls, animated only by a few words by a woman and a minimalist piano pattern, and, after another silly exercise in musique concrete, Birth of an Object, Johnson turned to Terry Riley's chromatic, repetitive and polymelodic minimalism with Revolving Moth Cage. The nine-minute To Be Swished/Dream of the Ups Driver was collated together a serene Brian Eno-esque lullaby, a bit of static noise and finally a couple of minutes of syncopated digital drums. After yet another abstract instrumental interlude, Freckled Robot, and a more substantial instrumental vignette, Soft Magnets, mixing different kinds of electronic sounds, the closer, You've Lost Your Footing in This World, was another charming Brian Eno-esque ambient atmosphere. This was certainly and educational album, experimenting (elegantly) with different formats and styles, from dissonance to ambience to samples, but hardly cohesive or meaningful for the listener.
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The song format staged a comeback with the EP The Fun Of The Century (Piao, 1998), that contained vocalist Jen Adam's and Johnson's sweet lullaby The Fun Of The Century as well as Johnson's and Martin Cooper's cubistic vignette Industrial Cutie and especially I Am The Sub-Librarian, a gentle breeze of an elegy engineered by the same couple of multi-instrumentalists (for droning cello and bells) with Caroline Potter on ethreal vocals.
The all-instrumental single Music For Annahbird (Bad Jazz, 1998), entirely composed ad performed by Johnson alone but rather disappointing (the ten-minute Me At 19, the futuristic vignette Music For Annahbird and the static buzz of Music For Wasps do not amount to much), the electronic folk-rock of Amongst The Books An Angel (Acetone, 1998), backed with the psychedelic noise of C'est Un Mauvais Presage Lorsque Ton Aureole A Tombe, the two suites of the EP A Trick of The Sea (Darla, 1998) and the tedious ballad There's No Need For Us To Be Alone (Rocket Girl, 1999), backed with the seven-minute Neil Young-ian meditation The Canadian Brought Us Snow (performed by a full-fledged rock band), sounded more like distractions once compared with the material of the second album, Low Birth Weight (Rocket Girl, 1999). Antares autotune plugin fl studio.
More distractions led to the EP Mort Aux Vaches (Staalplaat, 1999), before the third album, Artists Rifles (Rocket Girl, 2000), surfaced. Here Johnson has crafted a baroque work out of his 'lo-fi' beginnings, assimilating Caroline Potter's voice in a manner reminiscent of Mike Oldfield's suites and forfeiting some of the earlier eccentricities in favor of a Felt-like stupor. There's No Need For Us To Be Alone is the single, followed by I Came To Your Party (Acuarela, 2001).
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The mini-album Son De Mar (4AD, 2001) contains a (calm and relaxed) film soundtrack.
Piano Magic CD Discography At CD Universe
Almost Yesterday (1997) and the double-CD Seasonally Affective: 1996-2000 (Rocket Girl, 2001) are career retrospectives (the latter collects all their EPs and singles of those years, but only the first disc is worth the money).