Austin – Warning: don’t go to a Slow Magic show expecting to stand around. Also, probably don’t wear your favorite flannel.
The zebra-masked producer stopped at Austin’s Holy Mountain recently, for an early date of his first headlining tour. The tour supports his second full-length record, How to Run Away released earlier this month on Downtown Records. He’s usually pretty secretive, but not about his music—Slow Magic wants you to dance, and he got his wish at Holy Mountain.
Slow Magic started the set with How to Run Away opener, “Still Life.” The song starts from a main riff before building to a trance-style crescendo and the crash entrance of synthesizer and drums. It’s a good opener; Slow Magic manned the floor toms on stage while the laptop supplied everything else, and the song’s frenetic breakbeat gave him a chance to introduce a lot of kinetic force right from the start.
Early on, the artist stepped off the stage for “Corvette Cassette,” a mellower track from his first record. The song has an easygoing four-on-the-floor sort of beat, with softer melody. It still has impulse, but it feels more intimate, too, and it’s a song where joining the audience feels right and not forced.
That tension of softness and momentum continued with my personal favorite, “Waited 4 U.” The drum track is softer and less busy, but the song is carried with the melody. The song features a rare instance of discernible lyrics. But it’s the bloopy, spacey synths that give the song its real power.
Covers of other artists popped up in unexpected places and were welcome additions. “On Yr Side,” on its own a great song, segued unexpectedly into The Hood Internet’s Slow Magic x Destiny’s Child mashup “Say Yr Name.” Former tour-mate and UK producer Gold Panda got some love as well, when Slow Magic played his own remix of the former’s “Brazil.”
It wasn’t just the music that made the show work. It was one of the small number of times I felt like the stage lighting actually contributed something. The lazy carrousel of too-saturated colors at most shows feels like a bad idea we somehow got stuck with, like cargo shorts. But it’s not hard to imagine a musician hidden behind a mask being concerned with vision and color—it shows on his record sleeves, too—and Slow Magic went beyond matching the strobe with the beat. There’s coordination between his light-up mask and the stage lights, color-matching in place of bland monochromes, and themes that repeat suggestively and guide you to the beat. If your eyes wander they’ll land on the drums, which glow from beneath the drumheads.
That carefulness is what really sells me on Slow Magic. Public weirdness might have finally jumped the shark when this happened and it’s easy now to cry been-done at someone donning a zebra mask to play electronic music. Slow Magic earns it by giving you the sense that he cares. His Facebook page describes him as “Music from your imaginary friend.” And despite Slow Magic’s aloofness, his show feels like something made with you in mind, by a best friend who only talks in your head.
I got to spend time with him before the show. My two-part interview for Best New Bands will be coming soon. The tour has dates through October at locations all over the US, Canada and Europe.
Will Jukes
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