Magic

Released : September 1996

 

Personnel

Peter Nuttall - Music/Lyrics/Vocals
Douglas Hunter - Lyrics
Ian Forbes - Lyrics

Having got to grips with the new Synth, we started recording with it without having any songs written.  The first track 'Magic (Prelude)' is played live along with a sequenced piece and seemed to have an atmosphere about it.  I was in to the 'Police' at the time and 'When the rains come down' was inspired by their early stuff.  Lots of the tracks had big intros - there was a lot more actual music on this album and less words.  'Another place to hide' was mostly intro and 'Magic' has a huge pipe organ intro.  'Boom!' was originally supposed to have the word 'Boom' spoken in the chorus but was replaced with a 'sound effect' on the final version  because it sounded ridiculous.  

'Forty fields' was the obvious single; it was a clash of two different songs called 'The starless night' and 'Goodnight'. The title came from a moment when I was a child looking out into the valley near where I lived. It seemed like there were 40 fields between me and the horizon - at that age I never thought I'd ever see beyond that hill.  So the song is saying that all those dreams you have, they seem to be at least 40 fields away.    'New Fear' was written using the left over lyrics that went into Forty Fields and the title 'Goodnight' inspired something completely different.  It was dedicated to a music teacher I had who died that year.

Face to Face was about a pen pal I had who was in the country and wrote to me asking if we should meet up. I wrote it the day before we met.  'I Ran' was a lyric Ian sent me and wrote underneath 'Don't do anything with this because I might'.  I wrote a song around them the next day.  This was a showcase of the bass sequencer on the new synth.  'Maybe' brings the album towards a dark conclusion, being as it is about mortality and the final song 'Darkside' underlines the emotional soul of the album.

We've spent years trying to re-record this album, to make it commercially releasable. Attempts in 1998 and 2002 didn't go well and the current effort which began in 2012 is still in production.

- Peter