Interview with Magic Bullet
1) Who are you?
We are Magic Bullet. I am Mick Magic, he is Skit Zoyd. We are counterparts from parallel realities / twins who tell lies / something altogether much stranger. I know which one my money is on.
2) Can you describe your surroundings?
We live in a house that is just shy of 100 years old, big heavy wooden doors, picture rails and high ceilings. I have the second bedroom, at the front of the house, probably about 4½ metres square, as an office / music studio. There is no view this side, my wife has that luxury, working at the rear of the house, overlooking farmland, ponds and the Lancashire Fells. We live in the village of Knott End-On-Sea on the Fylde Coast in Lancashire, England. It has no bank or supermarket, the nearest of either being a half hour drive. And no through road, being bordered by the River Wyre to the west and the Irish Sea to the north, looking across Morecambe Bay to the Cumbrian Mountains. Stop smirking, I'll have you know one of them is 620 metres tall!
3) Where would you like to go?
The International Space Station. The Earth is not short of wow factor zones, I know, but I could not imagine anything would beat the sight of the whole planet from out there and the expanse of dark sky from the opposite window. I would like to drop things on Milton Keynes every time we flew over it too.
4) What would you say are the main features of your creative process(s)?
Beyond the initial brainstorming to develop a clear concept for a project, we like to make use of a certain amount of serendipity. We started out by doing a musique concrète piece for Shaun Robert's IFAR label, using recordings of animal noises. Neither of us had ever done anything quite like that before; I'd paid my dues via a decade with arty/experimental spacerock band, Magic Moments At Twilight Time, Skit had earned his spurs with hardcore noise merchants, Ehrlich Bullet; different worlds entirely. That initial project was our first foray into constructing pieces from samples and we very much allowed it to develop itself. We both enjoy doing stuff for so many different labels, and to different briefs, there's nothing more joyous than being dragged screaming out of your comfort zone, is there?
5) What do you really want your audience to understand about you/your art?
That we put our hearts and souls into it! Seriously though, to be absolutely honest, I'm not sure we DO want our audience to fully understand what we do, I'm not sure we fully understand it ourselves. My return to creativity, following a two decade sabbatical beyond MMATT, began with a book called "The Second World Chronicles", published under the name of Sati Varg. It took me more than a year to understand what I'd actually written there, fact masquerading as fiction, having originally believed it was just supposed to be a journal kept by a man stranded in an unknown place, virtually devoid of life. I'll be going back to explore it further with a project called "Gravitas", Covid permitting, of course.
6) Does audience matter?
I think it would be a rare creative type that possessed nothing by way of an ego, so I would have to say yes. There are few experiences more pleasant than hearing from a fan that they have really got something special from your music. The commercial world would have us believe music is simply entertainment, but I've always felt it to be more in the field of communication, and for that you need an audience. Size of audience, that's a different matter. But hey, all us guys know size doesn't matter...
7) Why Resist?
Because passive conformity is like a living death. Stasis. Stagnation. Resistance is futile? Join The Borg...
8) Why do you do it?
Because I don't really feel I have any choice. I couldn't be like 'ordinary people' if I tried. Case in point; when I was tested for Asperger’s, an autistic spectrum condition, I was horrified (if not surprised) to be diagnosed with "a high degree of autism". So I tried the test again, convinced I could beat it by answering what I would expect 'ordinary people' to say. My result was worse.
9) What drives you?
Pure unadulterated need. Without this, I think my head would implode. It would be a future simply too dark to contemplate.
10) What do you do in your daily life?
This is it. Until June 2012, we lived in the south east, where I worked part-time as a taxi driver as well, but it's just Music & Elsewhere since we moved up here. My wife, Samantha, runs a learning support business, but she had done some backing vocals for MMATT back in the day, and I did get her to do some dialogue for our "Mi Casa, Su Casa" album recently. We have a 7 year old daughter, she's done some recording with us too. Ferengi Rules Of Acquisition # 110; "Exploitation begins at home."
11) Do you have any strategies for adapting to the challenges of existing in your unnatural environment?
If so, what are they? Sam helps, she has a far better connection and understanding with 'ordinary people' than I do, so I find it far easier to hide in plain sight now than I used to. I don't think anything can beat sitting in the corner quietly and not talking to anyone though!
12) What is your favourite animal?
Aside from Skit? I like seals, seals are cool. We get them visiting the jetty sometimes.
13) What would your superpower be?
Can I have three? Pretty please? I would love to be able to fly and become invisible and / or unsolid at will. Skit wants the power to be able to make Donald Trump's wig fall off in public. I actually think that's more noble than mine.
14) What’s the strangest thing you’ve ever seen?
I think that would have to be the inside of my own head.
15) Please tell us something about one EFSPACM project that you took part in, and how you worked on your piece.
Our first (and only so far, but we're keen to do more) contribution was a track called "Here" to accompany the Gordon Way video, which we really enjoyed. The methodology was, I'm afraid, the obvious; to sit and watch the video repeatedly and swap ideas as we went. What we put together was the story as it revealed itself to us, a man walking away from dark secrets. The rhythmic component was made from loops of fiddling with a microphone with a loose connection, the voices all drawn from the various banks of online generators you can find these days. Although we didn't use it in the finished recording (for obvious reasons), Skit particularly enjoyed making Microsoft George say "would you like to tickle my bottom?" To be fair, it is quite funny.
Some links (we are very friendly and don't bite fingers, well, not so much);
https://www.reverbnation.com/magicbullet8
https://www.facebook.com/mickmagic.uwu
https://www.facebook.com/magicbullet8/
https://mickmagic.bandcamp.com
Comments
Post a Comment