Singled Out: Magus' Exodus

Espers co-founder Greg Weeks's project Magus with Jessica Weeks recently released the song "Exodus" from their forthcoming debut "Music For Mandrax" and to celebrate we asked Greg to tell us about the track. Here is the story:

"Exodus" is an inherently political song, due to the lyrics, but the lyrics come last for us. We begin our songs with fragments that get molded, amalgamated, what have you, into actual songs. In this case it was the guitar riff that came first. Sitting in our converted garage, we worked away at the song, adding Fender Rhodes and formulating additional parts until the final, mostly polished version of "Exodus" came into being.

The Rhodes is an interesting instrument to blend with electric guitar. The fact that it can sit in both the low and high ends of the mix make it a perfect companion to the more mid-rangey energy of the guitar. Neither of us are flashy players. Instead we sit with grooves. It is more about creating a vibe for us than anything else. That's where the lyrics come in.

Our songs live in a witchy fairytale world, but they also reflect the times within which we exist. Craziness abounds, and we couldn't help but see parallels between the current climate and that discussed in Yeats' classic poem "The Second Coming." The tone of our song reflects Yeats' apocalyptic vision, and there are several direct references to the text, specifically, the "winding, indignant birds" of Yeats' poem.

The song was mostly recorded to tape at our Hexham Head studio (the aforementioned converted garage) where we carefully layered guitars, keys, and vocals. Our approach to vocals is to homogenize them so that neither voice stands out, kind of like how that works with select Royal Trux songs. We wrangled our longtime friend Jesse Sparhawk to lay down bass guitar, then headed to Minor Street Studio in Philadelphia to record drums with Ben McConnell and to mix tracks.

"Exodus" is one side of the Magus sound, which is sometimes rough and aggressive, and other times mellow and moody. Being firmly situated in the former, we felt it to be a nice gut punch of an introduction to the band.

Hearing is believing. Now that you know the story behind the song, listen and watch for yourself below and learn more here

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