Latest Review: Magic Lantern – High Beams

Long Beach’s Magic Lantern have finally gone and released a new sonic document after what seemed like an eternity of waiting. Eagerly anticipated by those who have been biding their time waiting for the band to get on with their uber limited cassette only and CD-R releases (their Self-Titled CD-R was limited to 30), “High Beams”, the band’s latest opus [...]

Rademacher Interview with Malcolm Sosa

IfAN: So now that you have wrapped up your whirlwind November of triple residencies and have given away your new album Stunts, have you had anytime to sit back and reflect on it all…what worked, what didn’t?

Malcolm: I don’t quite know how to answer that one yet, but if the question was more along the lines of, “Would you do it all over again?”, than the answer would be yes. I think we could and would do it for every record release we do. It was everything we could hope for: we played a bunch of shows and saw over a hundred of our friends’ bands share the stage with us over the course of the month and we got to have a lot of control over who we played with — so it was like booking our own rock club with bands from all over the state.

Seriously, there were so many good bands and so many old friends we got to see! On the other hand, there were some cool new ones … Some of the best new bands (new to us) we ran across were Here Here and Silian Rail from San Francisco and Correatown and Henry Clay People from LA and this band from Fresno we’ve grown to love called Circles and Circles.

It was just great to show up every week and see some familiar faces and be in “your club” and get to relax and really shoot the shit. As opposed to a tour where you might end up in a club you don’t know with bands you don’t know and with people you don’t know. And, this is the worst, is when you don’t like the club, the bands or the people. Than you’re totally miserable for the 5 hours you’re stuck there.

This felt way more special and warm. Like we were all part of some secret club. If I could change anything, hmmm, maybe we would have had one of the residencies take place in a treehouse and there would have been a secret password.

IfAN: Any idea how many miles you put on your van in November?

Malcolm: A shit ton. We figured out one day, but I am not about to do the math again.

IfAN: Do you have any idea of the number of people who downloaded the Stunts tracks from the four blogs?

Malcolm: I have no idea. Most of you guys posted out the mp3s to yousendit or whatever file service. And I don’t know if those things have stats trackers. So your guess is probably as good as mine, if not better.

Do you know?

We’re just happy you guys were down to do the whole thing and help us get our record out there and in people’s ears. Sometimes that is the hardest thing to do. I find myself being confronted by band names all the time that I know — but I don’t know a single tune of theirs! Which is weird. Strange that a band name can travel farther than the actual music.

Anyways — I think it is important to try and keep your music and your “name” in synch. Like it is great when people know about your band and stuff ’cause they read about it on a blog, but it is a way bigger compliment to us if they’re singing your songs in their shower.

Which, by basically distributing our album, I think you helped us do.

IfAN: Do you think giving away the album had a impact on the CD sales of Stunts, both online from your website and from the merch table?

Malcolm: How many times have you seen an ad or a promo for a free ipod? Let’s just say Radio Free Silverlake and Aquarium Drunkard and You Set the Scene and Inflight at Night each gave away a hundred ipods. Do you think it would significantly decrease the overall demand for ipods?

I don’t. Plus ipods get stolen damn quick and need to be replaced. And records aren’t ipods.

But in short: no. I don’t think downloading a record and owning a record are the same thing. They are both cool in their own ways, but not the same.

And even if by giving something away we diminished it’s value and potential revenues and while it would be awesome for us to sell one bajillion copies of the record, that’s not really why we made the record. WE made it for people to hear. Which is what seems to be happening.

So we’re happy.

We’ve built a coffee table out of all the discs we have in our studio. If we can whittle it down to the size of an end table by the end of the year. That’d be just grand. We’d like to move enough of them so we have some scratch (and some room) to start working on another one. Our goals, BUSINESS-WISE, are very modest.

What was cool about the blog residency thing was that people got to wrap their ears around the music and make their own decision about whether or not they actually wanted to buy a peice of plastic manufactured by some kids in Fresno.

IfAN: What’s coming up for Rademacher in 2008? You guys have hit LA and SF pretty hard, can Orange County, San Diego, Arizona, Portland, and Seattle expect to see you guys at their locals clubs?

Malcolm: We’ve done a fair amount of touring ourselves in the last couple of years. I can’t say we’re planning on playing San Diego or Orange County anytime soon, but we’re planning on doing the northwest in February and the East Coast in March. I have a lot of good friends in New York and that’s about the time the weather starts to get good again. I also want to go to Philadelphia, because I have never been except once by accident when I got lost on the way from DC to NYC. And that sucked.

MP3: Rademacher – If You Got Some Magic

Rademacher play at The Echo this Friday, December 21st and will be joined by Kim Haden of Light FM on keyboards. Also they will be recording the show for Spaceland Recordings.