About Me
'PART MONSTER' - THE NEW ALBUM BY PIANO MAGIC, OUT MAY 21ST ON IMPORTANT RECORDS (NORTH AMERICA), HOMESLEEP (ITALY), GREEN UFOS (EVERYWHERE ELSE)
"Part-Monster is essentially Piano Magic’s “big-guitar, big-heart and big-autobiographic†record....a fearless and powerful piece of work that should - if there were any true cultural justice – remind British music-lovers of the importance of Piano Magic’s forever-potent ‘enemy-within’ status."
- Adrian Pannett, DELUSIONS OF ADEQUACY
"9 out of 10" - RUMORE (ITALY)
KLIMA ALBUM OUT NOW
Angele David-Guillou, incurable chanteuse with Piano Magic, releases her dazzling debut album under the name of KLIMA on 16th April. The album, produced by Jerome Tcherneyan of Piano Magic and co-produced by Guy Fixsen of Laika, features 11 vignettes of electro-acoustic loveliness.
More information here :
www.myspace.com/contactklima
www.peacefrog.com
FUTURE CONDITIONAL ALBUM OUT NOW
Cedric Pin and Glen Johnson of Piano Magic's future-retroist electropop project featuring guest vocals by Angele David-Guillou (Klima), Melanie Pain (Nouvelle Vague), Bobby Wratten (Trembling Blue Stars), Dan Matz (Windsor For The Derby) and Carolyn Allen (The Wake). Out now on LTM.
PIANO MAGIC BIOGRAPHY
From its conception as a bedroom-studio hobby in Summer 1996, Piano Magic's trajectory has never been textbook - random at best.
Originally, a self-confessed revolving door operation - musicians arriving, contributing and leaving as they pleased - a catalogue of varied singles, EPs and two albums were harvested by 1998. This convey-belt membership also resulted in a plethora of sonic stylings, from smallbeat Kraftwerkian Meccano Pop on debut album, Popular Mechanics (1997) to the breathless, ethereal, multi-layered melancholy of Low Birth Weight (1998).
Only in 1999 did Piano Magic resemble anything like a conventional format group. Smooth-talked into playing a Dutch festival which actually turned out quite well, they decided to play anywhere they were wanted and began to build something of a cult following, particularly on the European Continent. They spectacularly showcased the post-modernist baroque sound of Artists' Rifles (1999) at the Benicassim and BAM music festivals.
Ironically, the band have never infiltrated the hearts of the British music press - out of time, unfashionable and kinda weird looking, its best not to stay home much. Tours of Germany, Holland, Italy, Belgium, France, Spain peppered the next few years.
The band signed to 4AD Records in 2000 and delivered their most critically contentious work, Writers Without Homes and the soundtrack to Spanish director, Bigas Lunas' Son De Mar movie. Though oft-maligned, 'Writers Without Homes' was a particularly monumental milestone for the band, as it featured the first vocal recording for 33 years of lost 60's/70's folk heroine, Vashti Bunyan.
After 'Writers,' the band once again regrouped, drafted in French musicians, Jerome Tcherneyan and Franck Alba and recorded The Troubled Sleep Of Piano Magic, for Spanish independent, Green Ufos. This album perfectly encapsulated the live sound of the group - delicate vocals, glistening guitars, insistent drums, anthemic synth washes.
A new record, Saint Marie EP followed in June 2004 and featured collaborations with, again, Vashti Bunyan, Alan Sparhawk from Low and Ben Ayres from Cornershop.
Piano Magic's 2005 album, Disaffected, stretched fingers into an even more melodic, near-on "pop" sound, magically without dispensing with their notorious depth of emotion. Disaffected featured guest vocal contributions from John Grant of The Czars and Angle David-Guillou of Klima (the latter, now with her own debut solo album out on the Peacefrog label).
In the 2 interim years between the release of Disaffected and the forthcoming album, 'Part Monster,' the band have continued to be prolific and not only in concert. Johnson has released a debut album of experimental electronic under the name, Textile Ranch and along with keyboardist, Cedric Pin, as Future Conditional, they've put out an album of electropop on LTM, 'We Don't Just Disappear.'
To date, Piano Magic has harboured over 60 sonic orphans with nothing better to do, recorded 7 proper albums, a double CD retrospective and many, many singles. They've outlived several of the labels theyve recorded for and show no signs of stopping. At this point in time (April 2007), Piano Magic is Glen Johnson, Franck Alba, Jerome Tcherneyan, Alasdair Steer and Cedric Pin.
