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Artist
Magnetic Island
12+ albums
indie rockpost-rocknoise rockBrooklynnew york
about
Magnetic Island's debut LP "Magnetic Island": Call it scene one, take two. When Magnetic Island emerged from the remnants of Renminbi with a flurry of new recordings, they sounded like a band that was still sorting through the rubble of their old ideas and processes. On various singles and the Out at Sea EP, the re-christened band experimented with new textures and arrangements but hewed closely to the Renminbi sound: an economical, recorded-live sound, with clear guitar front and center. These early recordings were gradual, cautious and exploratory. Their trajectory was uncharted. With "Magnetic Island," it's anything but. For all of its openness to collaboration and to breaking apart the insular format of a rock and roll band, Magnetic Island has always had one woman steering it. Guitarist Lisa Liu is, and has been, undeniably the creative force behind the group, with keyboardist SMV and the band's drummers following her lead. So when Liu found herself with a handful of new, very personal songs written by the middle of 2011, she thought: What would happen if I just made an album myself? What happened, in short, was a record that proved a defining moment for Magnetic Island. "Magnetic Island" pairs the band's familiar grandiose structures with a newly baroque focus on layered arrangements, most of them the solo work of Liu, who not only learned to play drums, but also scored all of her intricate guitar parts in preparation for the recording. The result is the same ambit
