Name: Magic and Myth
Brand: Wonderful Beasts

Bonus disc

Bonus disc: No

Catalogue number

SUBEX00058

{"blocks": [{"data": {"text": "SUBEX00058"}, "type": "paragraph"}]}

Colour

yellow

Colour details

Smoked Yellow

{"blocks": [{"data": {"text": "Smoked Yellow"}, "type": "paragraph"}]}

Discogs ID

Discs

Download code

Download code: No

Rough Trade Exclusive

Rough Trade Exclusive: No

Extended format

Extended format: No

Format detail

Format Music GB

Limited edition

Release date

2022-05-20

Signed copies

Signed copies: No

Supplier GB

Cargo

Tax rate GB

UPC / Barcode

5060486621576

{"blocks": [{"data": {"text": "5060486621576"}, "type": "paragraph"}]}

1 / Extended format: No / LP / Rough Trade Exclusive: No / Signed copies: No / yellow

Artist

Wonderful Beasts

Genre GB

Electronic

Label GB

Subexotic

Second album from Wonderful Beasts, a sound art / electronic music pairing of the anonymous Xqui and Carl Knott (boycalledcrow, Spacelab). The album follows their debut collaboration together, <i>The Art Of Whisper</i> (Wormhole World, 2020). From the elegiac tones that open‘Dreamers’ to the closing bars of the strident ‘Lucky Man’, a triumphal, celebratory outlook can be heard across the thirteen trackspresented here. These are instrumental pieces filled with hope and tenderness; with love and sweetness; with yearning and joy; with memory and reflection; with pensiveness and patience. We hear the bright and delicate folk guitar manipulations that havecharacterised Knott’s work as boycalledcrow and traces of the plunderphonic, out-of-place field recordings and loops that have been aconsistent presence in Xqui’s prolific output. 

Holding these disparate elements together is a beatific, bucolic ambient structure, full of lush pads, crystalline melodies, pealing bell-like clusters and exquisite emotional warmth. That’s not to say that <i>Magic &amp; Myth</i> eschews the element of surprise that both artists are known for. We hear abrasive waves of dark, almost industrial sounds and fragments of voices emerging from the otherwise serene guitars of 'In Love', and skewed explorations of neo-classical motifs on the faux soundtrack cue, 'Theme From David’s Last Dance’.

Magic and Myth

Music GB