Magenta's third

Interview by Bart Jan van der Vorst
Live photographs by Bert Treep

Welsh outfit Magenta have rapidly become the best new thing in Prog. Their debut album Revolutions was well-received within the prog community when it was released in 2001, and their second album, the DPRP-recommended Seven, which put them firmly on the prog map three years later. The album ended up in 11th position in the DPRPoll 2004, and was voted best album by the Polish Metal Hammer magazine. The Classic Rock Society awarded the band with awards for 'best live band' and 'best vocalist' in 2004, and 'best band' in 2005.
In between the band released another two singles, a live album and a live DVD (which was in the top 5 "best DVD" in last year's DPRPoll), before releasing their long-awaited third album Home.

Originally Home was intended as a double album, but in the end the album has been released as a 68 minute single disc concept album, with a separate EP containing four more pieces, entitled New York Suite. Magenta mastermind Rob Reed explains:

ROB REED: Home was originally 60 minutes long when I first wrote the demos, but when I listened to it all as one piece, I was worried that perhaps, as you say, it wasn't proggy enough. I went back and wrote some longer songs, but when I finished recording and mixing the discs, I listened to it and found it too long to absorb in one listen, something that this music needed. Also it was running at over 100 minutes and it's difficult for anybody to find that much time for one listen, and with so much dense music, bits where getting missed. I'm much happier with the single disc, as a whole piece.

Those longer tracks that were cut have appeared on the bonus EP New York Suite which comes with the initial release of Home. By doing so Rob take a slight risk that the fans may prefer the more proggy EP. Rob however, doesn't worry too much about it.

This is something that confuses me, regarding what is and what is not prog. "Dark Side of the Moon" is the best selling prog album ever, but it is just a collection of great short songs. "The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway" is the same, just a collection of short songs, some of which are joined together.
Both are regarded as Classic prog albums. So it's weird when, as you say, one is more proggy than the other. Good prog, for me doesn't rely on "length", but on good melody.
Quality wins over quantity every time.

The important thing is that musically these four songs are not so attached to the story, whereas all the music on "Home" is directly related musically and emotionally to what is going on in the story. We weren't originally going to release the four songs until later in the year, but when I went back and played them again, I realised how good they were, so we decided to put them out as a complimentary disc to "Home". We'll definitely play one or two of them live at some point, too.

The Concept Of Home

The concept of Home follows a young girl on her journey from England to America and ultimately back again. Once again the concept and lyrics for the album stem from the mind of Rob's brother Steve, who also wrote the lyrics for Revolutions and Seven.

STEVE REED: The basis of the concept is a journey. Not just a physical journey but also an emotional one. The story follows the journey of a young girl who falls on the wrong side of the law, but knows she has to find her true self to survive. She travels to America and journeys through many States until she meets Joe, a native American. This meeting is the pivotal point of the story, and her life from there on takes a new direction, one which leads her to peace and eventually 'Home'.

ROB: Steve and I sat down and decided that we wanted a concept album telling one story, and that it would be set in the 70s. So musically it gave us the opportunity to make it a bit like those warm-sounding classic vinyl albums of the early 70s. We still wanted songs with different sections and moods, but not just with a prog influence, we also drew on early Elton John and even early Kiss.

STEVE: We wanted an American feel and to make the music a bit more mellow. We first had the idea of the journey across America, with the idea of then using different moods and textures. Originally we were going to have the main character moving around from place to place – with a track for each location. From there it developed into a double album, all vocal tracks with no instrumentals, so we needed a lot more lyrics, which led to a big development of the actual story.

Stylistically, I draw lot of inspiration from Francis Dunnery for the lyrics of Home. As many of his songs are drawn from his personal experiences they feel very real, and it's that sense of reality I'm trying to emulate in home. There are some autobiographical elements, as there were with Seven – I've certainly had experiences with downward spirals and depression. With Home I tried to draw on my own experiences to get people emotionally involved with the story to make it feel more realistic, even though the album is about a fictitious character. Obviously, I'd love for everyone to engage in the story, but if they just like it as a group of songs, that's fine, or even if they just engage with one or two moments in the story, as long as they've got something out of it, I'll be happy.

ROB: I am very proud of the end result, but it's hard to be objective after spending so long on a project.
I really like the last 8 minutes with Troy Donockley playing his Uillean Pipes, and I also think the last song features one of Christina's best vocal performances.

Magenta presents itself as a six-piece live-band, however, the music for the album was still mainly recorded by Rob Reed alone in his studio. This is different however for the two singles Broken and I'm Alive which were released in 2004.

ROB: The singles give an opportunity for the live band to perform the tracks as a whole. It also gives the band a chance to explore different styles and arrangements, in shorter tracks.
"Home" was recorded the same way as the last two studio albums, as I still play 90% of the instruments. I play a lot more guitar on this album, but will always go to Chris Fry, and other more virtuoso musicians, for the more complex solos.

Other Projects

Recently Rob also released an EP which Magenta recorded with Renaissance's Annie Haslam. With Magenta's vocalist Christina Booth being regularly compared to Haslam it was only a matter of time before they would record something together. A chance meeting at Rosfest last year led to this interesting collaboration.

Renaissance are one of my favourite bands and a huge influence. I only noticed when Tina put down her vocals on Revolutions that she sounded a little bit like Annie Haslam. This was bizarre as she had no idea who Annie was.
She then got in contact with her and we all met at Rosfest. She liked what we were doing and we wrote a song for her to sing. It was a great pleasure to hear Annie singing one of our songs

While most people will know Rob from his work with Magenta and Cyan, he also works on several other projects, the most have not much to do with Prog. Before Magenta Rob and Christina played in a band called 'Trippa', which was very much inspired by ABBA. And now Rob is undertaking steps more into ambient and dance music.

I have just finished a project called Chimpan A. Its a project I've written and produced with Steve Balsamo who has worked with Eric Woolfson of the Alan Parsons Project. It also features Pink Floyd backing vocalist Sam Brown and loads of other guests.
It's a mixture of Moby, Pink Floyd and Peter Gabriel.
It's very modern prog.

With Magenta (and Cyan) firmly rooted in seventies prog, and some of his other projects touching on different genres like pop and dance, a cross-over of the styles seems only the natural next step...

I listen to a lot of different styles of music from Abba to Elo to Björk and therefore pick up a lot of influences....but I don't think a dance mix of any Magenta would be appropriate... But it would be fun.

Another project Rob was heavily involved in last year was ProgAID. Not only did he write and record the song, he also played a big part in getting everybody together and mixed and edited over 100 tracks from 40 artists into the final result. When being asked how he looks back on this great event event Rob gives a modest reply.

ProgAid was great to be a part of. It was bizarre and exciting when I was receiving all these contributions from all these bands, many of which I was a fan of. It enabled me to have great fun in the studio mixing different bands and artists together. A very worth while cause. It was very successful and fulfilling on a personal level.

The Future

So with the new Magenta album out, what are the plans for the future?

I have just started writing the next Magenta album and this time I'm trying to keep it to a classic length of 50 minutes. I think that some band make CDs that are too long, although I'm probably guilty of this myself.
The classic albums of the 70s were all 45 minutes and they were forced to put their best music on that album with no padding. Also the new album currently has a 24 minute epic, but again it all may change.

INTERVIEW FOR DPRP BY BART JAN VAN DER VORST
© 2006 ALL LIVE PHOTOS BY BERT TREEP

LINKS:

The Official Magenta Website
Chimpan A Website
ProgAID
Home Roundtable Review