Internet Daemon Netlabelism Music: January 2025

Magic Bullet is an experimental, avant-garde duo from England, UK

https://mickmagic.bandcamp.com/

https://www.reverbnation.com/magicbullet8

http://www.mickmagic.net/

https://www.facebook.com/magicbullet8/

- What is the meaning and the concept behind the name of your music project?

MM: The Magic Bullet... ah, well that's a twofold answer. Musical origins is the first part of the answer; I spent a decade with Magic Moments At Twilight Time from 1986-96, Skit was making noise with Ehrlich Bullet in the late 80's; so, put the two together, et voila, Magic Bullet. The second part of the answer is that it genuinely WAS a 'magic bullet', in the sense that it was the solution to a problem; in that I hadn't done an album since MMATT's "Creavolution" in 1996, hadn't exactly embraced the transition from analogue tape recording to digital, and had been facing a kind of creative block for most of that time. The decision to start the Magic Bullet project came on October 1st in 2019. Twelve days later, we'd finished our first album, aptly called "Digitalis", commencing a highly creative four year spell. A bit back in the doldrums again this last year though, such is life...

https://mickmagic.bandcamp.com/album/digitalis

- What equipment do you use for create music?

I guess we have something of an unusual approach here, in that nothing is actually 'recorded' in the conventional sense, absolutely everything is assembled from samples, the majority of which we create ourselves, some less conventional than others. "Mi Casa, Su Casa", for example, the whole album was built from samples of household items with added percussion, from boilers and steam irons to printers and shredders. And we don't use conventional recording software, rather the same sound editor that we use to create the samples in the first place, a thing called WavePad by NCH Software.

Let me walk you through our 'theme tune', "The Magic Bullet Song";

1) The opening was captured on a handheld Sony IC Recorder on the jetty where we live (Knott End-On-Sea, north west coast, England), so the sound of waves, a kid playing, then the klaxon that announces the ferry is about to come over the river from Fleetwood.

2) The electronic tones that follow that were created from samples of a Stylophone, dropped an octave and looped (as were the same things 'in track').

3) The 'rock track' was put together with samples from a MMATT track from "Creavolution" called "Lights Turn Blue" with a little added percussion. The synth FX were from some quite old library samples.

4) The minimal vocals were created by chanting each word separately, then fitting them on to the finished track.

Embrace the electro-experimental experience!

https://mickmagic.bandcamp.com/track/the-magic-bullet-song

Magic Moments At Twilight Time (1987)

Magic Moments At Twilight Time (Cassette 1991)

MMATT - Creavolution CD (1996)

- Tell us a little biography about your project, when you started to make music?

I wrote my first song at 8 years old on an acoustic guitar, "Willy The Oak Tree" it was called, be grateful it was never recorded! That started circa 1972, I'd have been 14, started recording things on one of those small cassette recorders that came with a plug-in microphone. That would be guitar, some quite avant garde vocals and anything I could find that made a noise. Nothing survived, that's a shame, I'd love to have heard some of it again, check out the roots as it were. The stuff I became known for was much later, 1986, long after I'd given up all my hopes and dreams of being a rock star. Conformity had arrived, 28 years old neat hair cut, married, working as an office team manager, just suddenly stopped and thought "What the fuck am I doing with my life? This isn't me..."

Serendipity stepped in again. Discovered by chance that our Nicam stereo VHS machine (ask your dad) was capable of 4-track recording. Bought a Casio synth with built in sequencer capability, cheap Fender electric guitar, Peavey Musician amp, microphone, went for it. I still have all that stuff, incidentally! The lion's share of the first MMATT demo , "W20 Advance Guard", came from one single session on a Saturday in the October of 1986. That one is long deleted, but the intro piece was pulled out of mothballs a few years ago...

https://www.reverbnation.com/magicbullet8/song/34550806-w20-advance-guard-1986

- Who are your main music and artistic influences?

A lot of this would be the stuff I grew up with, mid teens seems to be a very influential part of one's life, I think. I remember hearing Hawkwind on Top Of The Pops in the summer of 1972 (Silver Machine) and just thinking 'wow'. Anyone who remembers MMATT won't be surprised about that! Some of the music coming out of Germany at the time too; Tangerine Dream, "Phaedra" was like a dream in sound format, incredible. Then where was Faust. Virgin had issued "The Faust Tapes" at a really cheapo budget album price, fascinating cover (an artwork called 'Crest' by Bridget Riley), snapped it up out of curiousity. I had never heard anything like it in my life. Those, I think, are the big three. I know there are many others who have had some influence, but I think that covers 95% at least. There's a best of MMATT (1986-1992) on Klappstuhl, have a listen, I think you'll agree...

https://klappstuhl.bandcamp.com/album/flashbax-ultimate

- What underground artists from the netlabel scene do you like?

Oh, how long have you got? I'd be more scared of missing anyone out! Pretty much everyone we've had the pleasure of working with thus far is on our regular playlist, worth checking out the three volume "Communitas" collection, a kind of concept compilation series that many of them were featured on. I guess the stuff I play on the radioshow (Dr. Magic's Audio Lab) will provide some clues as to my personal favourites too. No hiding, is there?

https://mickmagic.bandcamp.com/album/communitas-volume-i (Magic Bullet, Gypsy, Levente, Shaun Robert, Spam Javelin, M. Nomized)

https://mickmagic.bandcamp.com/album/communitas-volume-ii (rådiövölnå, Mental Anguish, Michael Ridge, V Poiskah DoDo, John Wills, Invisible Illusion, rADio eNd, Hal McGee)

https://mickmagic.bandcamp.com/album/communitas-volume-iii ({AN} Eel, Humanfobia, Pszren, Terbeschikkingstelling. DJ ANY WAY, Klopsmasjien, EMERGE, Howl in the Typewriter, Gerardo Colin, Conny Plankton)

- Do you have some influence from your country in your music?

Not deliberately, but I guess subconcious cultural bias is somewhat inevitable. I'm not particularly the typical Englishman, kind of consider myself a citizen of Planet Earth, I think all those years in the global cassette underground scene got me used to the idea it was a big world and that nationality is little more than an accident of birth. I am quite proud of my Irish heritage though. And who couldn't love the Pogues?

- What is your favorite album/ep composed by you? And why?

I don't really listen to my own stuff that much. Not that I don't like it. Well, there's some I'm not keen on, but mostly it's because you hear tracks over and over when you actually create them in the first place. So I mostly enjoy listening to the older material that production memories are more distant from. And then the Magic Bullet project is a bit piecemeal in that we do a lot of individual tracks for compilations and not a huge amount of albums. But if I had to choose, I'd probably take the easy option and go for "Centurion: The Best Of The Magic Bullet", because I got to hand-pick all my own favourites for that one!

https://mickmagic.bandcamp.com/album/centurion-the-best-of-the-magic-bullet

- What are your preferred music platforms/websites? Why?

Sales: Bandcamp - I can't say I'm happy with the way they've closed some of my friends' accounts without explanation, either before or after, but it's free (commisions on sales only), easy to use, plenty of space for artwork and text etc. One improvement I would like to see though is the ability to just scan through track to track on an album, seems odd that you can't do that. Always found support to be fairly quick and helpful.

https://mickmagic.bandcamp.com

Showcase: Reverbnation - another one with a free basic package, allowing you to upload up to 200 tracks, which you can order as you wish, including playlists and albums. You have an 8MB track limit (circa 8:43 at 128k mp3), but that's fine for most things.

https://www.reverbnation.com/magicbullet8

- Any funny anecdote in the composition of a track or an album?

Shaun Robert (Institute For Alien Research label) had this idea for a 'musique concrète for children' compilation. At the time, our Twizz was about 7 and she used to love playing out adventures with a toy plastic cat she called Officer Kitty, as if she were doing a video for You Tube, complete with commentary. We thought it would be quite funny to combine her narrative and sound effects with our own avant garde sound creations and came up with this idea of "The Adventures Of Officer Kitty In Space". So we set up a mic and just told her to go for it, get this brilliantly nonsensical story about evil babies and plankton factories, but it turned out she thought it was just a practise run and went all prima donna precocious seven year old on us;

"Wait, it's on!?" She says.

"Yeah."

"It's recording right now?"

"Yeah."

"Right, turn it off!"

Needless to say, we used that bit to finish the track!

https://ifarmusiqueconcretecompilation.bandcamp.com/track/the-adventures-of-officer-kitty-in-space

Magic Moments At Twilight Time (Live 1989)

- Do you play live? How was the experience?

Ah, not for a long time, early 90's, I think. MMATT's live debut was terrifying, we'd written a 40ish minute set that went from start to finish without breaks, so there was no 'between tracks' bit for applause and no way of telling if people were enjoying it or not, all we had to go by was their shocked 'what the fuck is this' looks on their faces! Come the end, much applause and calls for an encore (didn't happen, support act, and hadn't rehearsed anything else!), never suffered with stage nerves again. We used to have quite a good time, but playing to small audiences when you set your own gigs up did grate a bit. Latter days got better, we got to support Here And Now and The Pink Fairies, that was pretty cool. As for today, if I'm perfectly honest, we'd have a lot of grief trying to reproduce Magic Bullet stuff on stage. And anyway, I'm not sure Knott End Working Mens Club is ready for us yet...

- Any news for this 2025?

I wish! Just trying to get some existing projects finished. As I said earlier, bit of a creative vacuum this last year, only recorded three new tracks in the whole of 2024, and one of them was only 50 milliseconds long! Sure, there were reissues and some decent collections released, but that was it. The monthly radioshow, which I started doing for KOWS in November 2023, took up a lot more time than I had thought it would. But then that's me to the core, I have Asperger's and I'm a touch OCD, thus I can do nothing by half-measures, and the show has become something of an all-consuming monster! But I love doing it. Sure, I could make my life easier, just play a track, chat about it briefly, leave it at that. But what fun would that be? Nah, set it on a starship, include special effects and background sounds, add other characters, include a storyline and plenty of humour, do web features and a regular Facebook event for it. Yeah, who needs free time anyway?

- Do you want to say anything else to your listeners?

Thanks for listening! I hope you'll come visit the website, currently celebrating 38 years in the music world, more than 600 pages of it. There's sections on the current Magic Bullet project, playlists and features about the Dr. Magic's Audio Lab radioshow; plus plenty of history of the heady days of Magic Moments At Twilight Time, Music & Elsewhere (the label I ran from 1992) and the wider world of cassette culture, complete with over 40 hours of music from the well over 200 bands and artistes we released, all free to stream and download at your leisure. Enjoy the trip...

http://www.mickmagic.net