Promo EP on Bandcamp

Pay $3US, or more. If you pay more you are helping me finance a physical pressing of the full-length album, which is something I cannot afford at the moment.

I'll rise with no other

I'll Rise With No Other by Magnus Reimer

BUY THIS AT BANDCAMP

This is so overproduced I'm tempted to call it my Sufjan Moment, but to many of you it will still probably just sound like Depeche Mode. I don't know where to begin. I started out in April composing this for piano and vocals only. I tried to make something different yet simple, using a lot of extended chords and quartal and quintal chords, then I worked my way back to "normality" using melodies and implied 3rds. The scaled down version sounded terrible so I began experimenting with different settings, a process that took 8 month. During the production I have, to mention one thing, played percussion on an oven plate with a chopstick (that's the swish-sound).

The insanely lenghthy production and lots of annoying difficulties with mixing almost made me lose interest in music, but now that it's finished I'm pretty damn happy I never gave up. If you like this song, please let me know, because I'm sort of dying here. This project is really hard on the nerves at the moment. Cheers and hugs.
/Magnus

Lyrics:

There's a noise at the core of everything
I'm dreading the roar unraveling
So entirely unlived still
I'm waging a war on little things
Not dreading the core of everything
And I'll come back and I can try again

You can hide under a million things
But you can't hide that you've been suffering

I'm surrounded by a million morons
Waging war on a million morons
So entirely unlived still
There's a noise at the core of everything
And I'm dreading the roar unraveling
But I'll come back and I can try again

You can hide under a million things
But you can't hide that you've been suffering

And you, that storm, I'll rise with no other
rise with no other, rise with no other than
you, in that storm, I'll rise with no other
rise with no other, I'll rise with no other than...
...you.

Open Horizon

Open Horizon by Magnus Reimer

This is meant to be the very last track, chiming in after a rather long epic track called Grand Finale. I wrote this in an honest attempt at trying to create something on a keyboard as wild and beautiful as what The Tallest Man On Earth can create with just a voice and a guitar. In the end I think I created something different, which is probably for the better.

Oh, and if you're wondering about the cover, it's not official, just something I threw together when I thought I had finished the song "I'll rise with no other", which is currently in a slight state of "hiatus".

Lyrics:

Open horizon
Open horizon
Not a cloud in the sky
I aim for your eye

You'd better damn well be right

You'd better damn well be right by Magnus Reimer

This is the first song in quite a while, and the first to be recorded with my new tube mic.

Lyrics:
And when I rest my head on you
You wear happiness with some pride
It descended upon me
Revealed my nothingness to be void

Yeah we could rise together
Roam the skies together
Turn over stones together
Fill our hearts together

And when I rest my head on you
I fear happiness is my trial
Cause if I'm cursed to see you go
Fear I'll wear nothingness without hope

Cause then we can't rise together
No roaming the skies together
or turn over stones together
Just breaking our hearts together

You say I'm wrong
well then you'd better damn well be right
...
My light
You'd better damn well be right...

EP on Bandcamp

I've been in the studio for a couple of days finishing some mixes and making some songs lift. To honour the occasion and my hard work I've uploaded the first five tracks on the soon(whahhaha) to be 13-track album as an EP called Jupiter on Bandcamp, the indie music store #1. I'm really happy I did this, because they let me upload it in 24 bits, and allows the buyer to download in pretty much any format. The mp3s sound better than the ones I can rip in logic so WIN.

Hm, my music has never sounded this good before. :-D

Bears Eat Beats blogged me.

Read all about it here.

While Magnus is primarily a piano player, he has spent years studying music theory, and his dynamic arrangements reflect this. He lists Sigur Ros, Sufjan Stevens and John Foxx as influences, but the artist he seems most indebted to is Depeche Mode. His use of analog synths and unusual arrangements (the harpischord is featured on a few tracks) gives his sound a bit of a throw-back quality that distinguishes him from his contemporaries. Magnus’ soaring vocals do the rest.

:-D

Right, back to the studio, got 9 tracks to finish!

Unofficial video for All These Intentions

The DIY video I posted earlier didn't do it for some, so they went and made a video for me. Thank you so much, P!

Album tracklisting

The Album by Magnus Reimer

As I am nearing the end of recording this yet unmastered album, I've been thinking about the tracklisting and zooming in on what might be missing on the album. My plan is to record the finale and one more track before it's set to go. Anyways, seems I've managed to figure out the first five tracks (see player above) but then after No Rival it seems there is a track missing, a slow experimental song I need to create as soon as possible! This post will be updated...

If you have any opinions on the tracklisting, or a suggestion for the other half of the album, please comment below.

Tracks that need to be put somewhere:




Världen (final mix coming soon, watch the video on facebook: HERE)
How Could I Forget Something Like That? (final mix coming soon)
Weird track
Final track (well obviously this one is last)

All These Intentions

Instructions:
1) Turn down the volume on the youtube player.
2) Press play on the youtube player, then pause immediately.
3) Wait until the youtube video loads.
4) Press play on the soundcloud player.
5) Wait 20 seconds
6) Press play on the youtube player.
7) Enjoy

(Note: Don't go to full-screen unless you are sure it will turn up in a new tab/window.)


Here's a remix of a 2009 song, then called "(all these) Intentions (they're making me blind)". This was the first electronic song I made with live takes, and it has taken some time to perfect that style. Some might think that it has too much reverb, but it's one of them songs that sounds bloody awful without a certain amount of echo drenching, so there you go.

I've wanted to make a video for this with the Solyaris car scene, but whenever I upload something to youtube the sound turns to utter shite. Therefore I present to you this interactive approach. The video is slightly shorter than the song, but it still works out pretty well I think.

Download the song for free by pressing the black arrow on the player.


Lyrics:

All these intentions
They are making me blind
Hell I was so dated
Asked to wait around

Jupiter

I've been sucking this caramell since October. I've worked rather hard at getting an "alive" sound by recording almost everything in live takes, including the chinese drums towards the end. I also dusted off my good old Juno-106 for some sharper yet also smoother synth sounds. What sounds like a steel drum is in fact me playing really fast with the Hammond organ, an instrument I'm getting more and more into. The bass is (again) an electric piano that I've simply distorted and given a very sharp equalizer boost.

Buy this song at bandcamp: JUPITER EP

Jupiter, show me a sign
Say I'm the infinite, drenched in wine
Walking onwards, do I know for sure? Oh well...

Jupiter, show me sublime
Say I'm the infinite, remove me from time
Lift this gravity, to shambles insanities of mine

Jupiter, bring on your might
I swear I won't let you out of sight
Pull the worn strings and make them chime, oh

Jupiter, pour some more wine
Lift my island into the sun
Cheat this gravity, give me some levity this time

Jupiter, show me a sign
Say I'm the infinite, drenched in wine
Walking onwards, do I know for sure? Oh well...

Jupiter, pour some more wine
Lift my island into the sun
Cheat this gravity, give me some levity this time

It Turns Out

This song is in my mind the first song on the coming album. I wrote it twice, the first segment (in G major) during just a couple of hours about a month ago and the second segment (in F minor) earlier this week when I was rehearsing the first. It must sound like such a sad song, but that actually wasn't the intention. This is just how things go sometimes.



It makes me slightly confused over what I want this album to be like, because when I listen to this song I'm having difficulty putting it together with pop songs like Hell, When Love Comes or Throw Yourself. At the same time I know this is the kind of music I should be doing more of. Hopefully my next song, Jupiter, a 6 minute synthpop megalomania song, will reconcile all these doubts.

Lyrics:

It turns out
It's not love I can see within me
It turns out
It's not love I can see within me
But I know
That it's love I can see behind your eyelids

It turns out
It's not love I can see within me
It turns out
It's not love I can see within me
But I know
That it's love I can see behind your eyelids

There's a river
And it flows out into nothing
There's a river
And it flows out into nothing

Now I Walk

This song is the result of three days of mild flu and endless November storms, as well as alot of other things of course. Some people might find the first line of lyrics abit odd, but I was thinking about a time many years ago when I climbed to the top of the volcano Ngauruhoe in New Zealand, which to me was a very cleansing and symbolic act related to the emotions in this song. I find writing lyrics to be extremely arduous and it would probably be easier for me if I sang in Swedish. It's just that it sounds bloody awful on 90% of the songs I make. If you find that line hopelessly odd, let's just say that it's my liberty as a non-native english speaker to fuck up your precious language any way I see fit, or that with me being swedish I just don't know any better.

About the music, well I've been trying to use almost exclusively live takes, and not editing things afterwards or using midi-tracks. I hope I don't need to hear "You have to get a guitar" anymore when people hear what I did to the Rhodes piano in this song.

I stood at a torment's rim
I was shifting through your words
Tell me where can I live
Without worry
I'd do sordid things to get up
If I could
Then I walked
Now I walk

I still stand at a torment's rim
I am shifting without words
I know where I can live
Without worry
To do sordid things to get up
I just couldn't
But I walked
Now I walk

Press photos.

People have been asking for a press photo. Unfortunately I can't afford having one taken, so this will have to do. Print it and cut out the one you prefer.

(click on photo to see larger version on flickr.com, with download option)

This arty one might suit you better:

Hell, When Love Comes

It would be rather stupid of me not to mention the theme music by John Barry for the classic tv-series The Persuaders. I always loved it, and have been inspired by it for this song. In the end though, Hell, When Love Comes has it's own, independent soul and goes many places where that tunes doesn't.



If you are wondering what happens at the end, all I can say is there's a swedish curse word involved.

Lyrics:

Hell, when love comes
We'll tear our clothes apart with joy and dance upon our graves
Hell, confined in right now
We made a pact to lose ourselves and you replied so kindly
"All of us, filthy swine love each other blindly"

Dance, til our hearts fail
Oh surely, we've lost..
...all our bearings, so watch over me
You promised you'd watch over me!

One more, before we leave our dreams
Two more, for our hands for our breaking seams
I'll keep you warm I'll hold you align
'til wings grow off your broken spine
Smiling, stumbling, falling,
I am ready for more.

Hell, when love comes
I'll tear my clothes apart with joy and dance upon my grave
Hell, confined in right now
I wish that I could give you more, but that's what we said
But underground, beneath the grass, we love each other blindly

Hell, have I turned vile?
Cause surely, I've lost...
...all my bearings, so watch over me
You promised, to watch over me!

One more, before we leave our dreams
Two more, from our hands for our breaking seams
I'll keep you warm I'll hold you align
'til wings grow off your broken spine
Smiling, stumbling, falling,
I'm still ready for more.

..."#¤%

My musical biography.

THE EARLY YEARS



My musical history started around the age of four when I nagged my mother to get me a cassette of the eurovision song contest which I then listened to for hours and hours on a primitive portable cassette player. I am happy to say that my exposure to these songs did not seem to have harmed me in any serious way, although my grandmother once recalled that it was "rather annoying". A year or two later, after more nagging, I got an electric organ to play with which later resulted in piano lessons for many years. The only real memory of this organ I have is a minimalistic song I composed on it using some tritonus intervals (no, I'm not kidding) which was called "tuta", which translates simply as "honk". Probably even more annoying than the cassette player.

THE TEENAGE MISTAKES



Later when I started school I listened alot to Jean-Michel Jarre, Kraftwerk and Depeche Mode and by my early teens I had convinced my parents to get me a syntheziser. For some strange reason I had an obsession with old analog syntheziser sounds which was a bit problematic at the time as all keyboards were digital (like roland d-50), those were dark days indeed. Anyways, after a musical project together with my brother I started making analog synthpop songs myself and actually had a gig. By the age of twenty however, I abandonded this project after it had been ruined by sticking too hard to a single idea: I wanted to do as varied songs as possible without changing the bass note. This means lots of sus-chords, 6ths, 7ths, 9ths, 11ths and other variants. The big flaw however was that I couldn't master making proper chord progressions and that all the songs sounded suspiciously similar.

LOST IN STUDIES



This musical simplicity and my limitations bored me and I started studying musicology. I remember these two years as rather insane, trying almost desperately to learn and apply every chord known to man without really succeeding in understanding them or their proper use. And yet, almost everything I know about music comes from this brief period of my life. Afterwards I spent several years stuck making complicated beatlesque songs that never seemed to get finished, with wierd chains of chords that never could find their way back to neither the beginning or a proper ending. Dark days again.

The next obsession to reach me was singing. I had been singing ever since the age of 13, but I believe it was when I heard Thom York in 1995 that something really changed. I have not taken any proper lessons so there's not much to tell really, other than that it took a long time for me to find my own style. The singers who have been most important to me are as different as Neil Finn, John Lennon, Miquel Gil, Yasmin Levy (yes), Jónsi Birgisson, Dylan and Ray Charles. The music I like, these days, is almost 100% controlled by whether or not I like the singer.

A BLURRY AND DELIGHTFUL NEW ERA



After some years of trying to become a writer I backflipped, bought new gear and started writing songs again. They are of a different style than before, in some ways a merger of my minimalist tendencies and my over-the-top-too-complicated-chord-progressions tendencies. I'm not afraid to do strange things, but I now always weigh it against the melodic expression. If there's no emotional advantage in giving a melody some fancy chord I just drop it and move on. At the same time I seem to think that a song just isn't worth writing if it doesn't contain something odd. I probably obsess about this, but at any rate my obsession with chords is what defines me as a song writer.

These new songs come remarkably easy, I'd estimate that recording a song takes about 100 times longer than writing it, but perhaps that's a common truth, I dunno. I am now working as fast as I can to record enough songs to make an album and set up some sort of live set, hopefully you will hear alot more from me in the future.

/Magnus

PS. Yes that is me in all of the photos.