"Music For Gnomes" by Magnetic Vines
Our first cassette release on SADFAM Records. Out on June 13th!
Magnetic Vines is an ambient duo consisting of Southern California-based producer, keyboardist, and harmonicist Ross Garren, and Northwestern Montana-based composer and multi-instrumentalist Erik Miron (aka Rooftop Garden Revue on SADFAM). The two began collaborating while playing in a bicycle-powered trad jazz band called The Vignes Rooftop Revival. Eschewing traditional forms of traveling to gigs, the two could be seen riding a tandem bicycle through downtown Los Angeles with a trailer full of musical equipment. When the rocky beginning of the roaring 2020s sent The Vignes Rooftop Revival on hiatus, Magnetic Vines came into existence. Centered on on musical explorations and expressions of the natural word, Magnetic Vines blends layers of acoustic sounds and field recordings with a curiosity for ambient electronic processes. Over the band's five-year history, their productions have charted diverse physical and sonic landscapes: from melodic instrumental records to minimalist piano meditations to field recordings of American Primitive Guitar to long-form collective improvisation.
From Erik Miron:
“Music for Gnomes evolved from a fruitful session of Song-A-Day-For-A-Month in July 2023. Watching the slow collapse of the natural world, the disappearance of childhood haunts beneath the relentless sprawl of development, and the aging process and declining health of loved ones, I found myself creating musical landscapes as a form of escape. In the end, this world of gnomes in a magical forest was never more than a fantasy, and beneath the musical textures runs an undercurrent of deep sadness. The record nevertheless ends on a peaceful note, an acceptance of impermanence and a hope that if people and places do not persist in the physical world, the feelings they evoke can be preserved and transmitted through musical narrative and communuty-- perhaps in this sense, the realm of the gnomes is something more than a fantasy
From Theresa Thordarson (aka kilter):
“Our latest SADFAM release, Magnetic Vines’ Music for Gnomes, provides a release from reality, a lovingly curated ambient adventure that balances the earthy and ethereal and blurs the lines between field recording and fantasy.
As varied are the birds and critters in our shady knoll are Erik Miron’s plucked textures and tones, which weave acoustically, warp and warble, at times feeling straight from the 70s in their Nick-Drake-warmth. Artfully wound with Ross Garren’s keyboard wizardry, one is presented often with the forever intriguing question: is it a guitar or synth? (Luckily, you don’t need to answer correctly to continue on your forest journey).
Shimmering winds from Garren, Miron, and collaborators Hailey Niswanger and Rumi Inoue make welcome appearances in this nature scene, in turns providing a cool breeze or a sonic sunbeam, emerging in relief out of this Mort-Garson’s-Plantasia-Goes-Acoustic musical landscape and transporting the listener away from whatever messy desk or urban breakfast nook they previously inhabited.
Magnetic Vines might be the natural world captured exquisitely in sonic form, or their harmonicas’ and guitar strings’ attempt to escape from their manmade casing, to wend free in the knolls and ravines of the mysterious Land of the Gnomes. You’ll want to listen to find out.”
We’re thrilled to be releasing this collection as a digital download and as a limited edition recycled plastic cassette tape. Follow our bandcamp page to stay tuned on the cassette release and to preorder. Out on June 13th. Thanks, everyone!
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SADFAM Records