Magic & Naked & grown up
Genevan chamber psychedelicists Magic & Naked deliver a compelling fourth album via Robin Girod’s Cheptel Records. Officially, the band that started as a school project now consists of Romain Deshusses (guitar, vocals), Elie Ghersinu (bass, vocals), Léonard Persoz (guitar), and Augustin Von Arx, drums. No mention is made of the battery of effect pedals and other gadgets that turn their guitar songs into something considerably stranger.
“Our brothers have grown up. Deeper. They now carry lives, trajectories, desires that sometimes surpass reality itself”, informs us their press release. And:
“An album that embraces the softness of the second,
clarifies the experiments of the third,
but above all rediscovers
the momentum,
the freshness,
the desire of the first”, it says in their press release
It is not easy to describe Magic & Naked’s “grown-up” style. Drenched in pedal effects, the super mellow first single “Arman” perhaps comes closest to the floaty early acoustic Pink Floyd vibe of their first recordings. Elsewhere we detect hints of 70s easy-on-the-ear fusion jazz, French chanson, dub reggae, space rock and even Liminanas-style minimalism. The dreamy and drowsy vibe that beautifully holds together the whole album, however, is single-handedly generated by the supernaturally laid-back vocals.
