Deep Magic – Reflections of Most Forgotten Love (2013)

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Reflections of Most Forgotten Love is the third album from Los Angeles’ Deep Magic.
The solo project for current Sun Araw live band member Alex Gray, Deep Magic’s work has tended towards a meditative ambient realm, crafting a cosmic sound described by Uncut as having ‘a sort of calm and organic grandeur that recalls Popol Vuh’. Indeed like Popol Vuh, pursuit of a kind of spiritual grace has proven to be the measure at the heart of Deep Magic. Reflections of Most Forgotten Love finds a new urgency, an ever-shifting puzzle of sound breathing vital new life into Gray’s lyrical vision.
Dynamic and unrelenting yet somehow beautifully spacious and patient in its unfolding, this epic work thrives on equal parts pulse and poise, an essence held within a thrilling multiplicity of ideas.
Skittish techno, rolling pianos, warm pedal steel, foggy, dub drifts and microscopic sonics play out a hypnotic movement of moods with magnetic compulsion. Throughout its stirring, blissful way, intimacy is its keynote. As the title suggests, this is an album of emotively raw presence with a singular take on solitude as a many splendoured thing.

"Reflections of Most Forgotten Love is the third album from Los Angeles’ Deep Magic. The solo project for current Sun Araw live band member Alex Gray, Deep Magic’s work has tended towards a meditative ambient realm, crafting a cosmic sound described by Uncut as having ‘a sort of calm and organic grandeur that recalls Popol Vuh’. Indeed like Popol Vuh, pursuit of a kind of spiritual grace has proven to be the measure at the heart of Deep Magic. Reflections of Most Forgotten Love finds a new urgency, an ever-shifting puzzle of sound breathing vital new life into Gray’s lyrical vision. Dynamic and unrelenting yet somehow beautifully spacious and patient in its unfolding, this epic work thrives on equal parts pulse and poise, an essence held within a thrilling multiplicity of ideas. Skittish techno, rolling pianos, warm pedal steel, foggy, dub drifts and microscopic sonics play out a hypnotic movement of moods with magnetic compulsion. Throughout its stirring, blissful way, intimacy is its keynote. As the title suggests, this is an album of emotively raw presence with a singular take on solitude as a many splendoured thing." - boomkat

As far as I can gather Alex “Deep Magic” Gray has been involved with Pocahaunted andBlack Eagle Child and is a current live member of Sun Araw, plus Phil says his last album was really good so all the signs are positive as I press play on this one, which is his third and comes out on the Australia’s reliable Preservation label.
Thankfully the signs were correct, this is a beautiful CD full of layered droney synth ambience, field recordings, subtly shimmering guitar and lots of distracted plinking and plonking on a piano, sucking you into a vortex of tropical bliss with birdsong and trickling water with a strangely sinister undercurrent of weirdness keeping it just beyond your grasp. It’s got a really blissed-out tropical paradise feel like a more ambient Inner Tube or a more synthy take on that awesome recent Mike Cooper CD on Room 40 (if you’ve not heard that, please check it out, it’s wonderful).
While it is consistently languid there’s always an alien weirdness about it to keep you on your toes. Particularly impressive is ‘Lapses In Reason’, which mixes somewhat glitchy stop-start synths with lashings of wet reverb for a mind-meltingly stylish passage. Great CD, cerebral but still utterly relaxing. - Norman Records

One of my favorite things about Deep Magic is listening to it in confined spaces (bathroom/shower, hallways/tunnels, foyer/entrances) on my headphones, trying to hum along, matching the tone, but reverberating it enough that I can hear myself echoing in the confined spot and through the music playing in my ears. There’s a real resonance to Deep Magic (Alex Gray)’s work, beyond that of sound and thought. It’s almost harmonious to the natural path of Earthly living, as though he’s bringing a dream-like state of mind to the most realistic of moments: that of the further thinkers opposed to the corporate satirical. It’s a peace with electronics that helps you sort out future-sorta-thoughts when dabbling on “Brighter Days.” It’s complete submission of artistry of life, not work. Is it abstract, or is it just the way we perceive it? Are we confined to the spaces we’re placed in, or do we confine our minds to what’s around us, rather than divulging in crevasses of our brain stem? It’s all out there. Deep Magic is out there. Discover anew. Meet Alex on the astral-plane of thought and melt your minds together in musical matrimony. HEAP! - C MONSTER

2013 has been the year of the Boards of Canada mystery record reveal, the brazen Daft Punk quarter-annum marketing scheme, the Oneohtrix Point Never soft-spoken spring awakening, and #Yeezus. The year that was is barely half over, and it has taken with it our ability to respond to good music with dignified aplomb. When Alex Gray of Deep Magic released the first single off of his third LP, Reflections of Most Forgotten Love, a song divisively titled “Brighter Days”, through its entirety I felt like I was looking down the wrong direction of a set of railroad tracks. As the news of bigger, bolder records emerged in swirls of fabricated expectation, I was blissfully obstinate—plugged into another thing entirely, not knowing what fury hell hath wrote, or when the barreling train would hit the station. Deep Magic’s latest begins with a track titled “Only You”, and when you’re desperately searching for a tonic to manufactured desire, fading away on a cloud of sonic ambience is probably a good place to start.
Reflections is the third record from Gray’s solo project, an undertaking he produces when he’s not working as a live member of Sun Araw, and if you’ve ever been to a 90-minute hot yoga class the morning after abusing the cheapness of cheap beer, you’ve already heard this record without realizing it. It starts with a deep, sonorous bellow, layered with the trickling water of a nearby creek, and as a natured acoustic guitar ambles around a microphone, the entry into its 10-track offering is smooth and filled with possibility. “Only You” begins as a shedding of skin, a literal offering meant to give sacrifice to the sun gods and let go of all that ails you. By creating a generous foundation in the opening of this record, Deep Magic enables giving in to all 42 minutes of its life cycle with demonstrative ease. Reflections of Most Forgotten Love should not be, by any means possible, indulged on shuffle or in single servings.
The rest of the record plays out on a terrestrial but familiar terrain, like yet another example of the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon. The sparkling creek water returns, as well as the deliberate and purified fade-ins and fade-outs, and any instance of aggression feels muted and forgiven. It would be derogatory to suggest that this is background music to be played while doing something else (as is the case with all instrumental or ambient albums), but an exception will be made if you’ve just taken up meditation. I’ve actually found my breathing getting deeper and gentler while listening through mournful lamentations like “Alone In Her Cave” and piano-melodic “I’ve Been Thinking.” They are not dissimilar to breath, in fact, in the way that Holly Herndon’s fantastic Movement forced the listener to think consciously about and adapt their respiration. When the album’s main single begins, at the near end, something like deliverance is reached, all through the bashfully poetic growth of arpeggiated tones so chosen to reject rhythm and encourage freedom. They are critically underpinned by scratchier mettle, but as symphonic chords enter toward the song’s height, once again, any signs of trouble are placated. “Brighter Days” may be Reflections of Most Forgotten Love’s longest and most undulating track, but it isn’t its best. “Best” would imply singularity, and this is the second reminder that this album should be taken in one piece.
Deep Magic’s previous full-lengths—2011’s Lucid Thought and 2012’s Closed Eyes—don’t capture this brutal totality in the same way. The tracks are more experimental, less cohesive, less structured—all to the effect of a loosely knit throw blanket, while his 2013 effort is more like a crisply starched quilt. This record is for fans of ambient music and philosophical chatter, but it’s also for admirers of contemporary art and attendees of night markets. The person who might not enjoy Deep Magic is one who doesn’t find purpose in patience. The exchange between artist and listener can be a munificent one if we let it, and in the example of Deep Magic’s best release to date, the delivery only hits harder if the listener remains open and willing to the sum of its ethereally woven parts. - DAYNA EVANS 

Whilst the title may sound like a lost Márquez novel, it’s actually the third album from Los Angeles resident Alex Gray, and it’s awash with different styles and sounds. Gray is part of Sun Araw’s touring band, and their shared influences and sounds are obvious on the ear. There’s a tendency to swamp the tracks with a thick and dense layer of sounds, the delicate instrumentation sometimes fighting to be heard through the mounting din of accumulated noise (‘Subtle Reactions’). But Gray also shows a tender side – ‘Alone in Her Cave’ opens with the sound of flowing water, a simple synth refrain undulating above as a series of dull bass notes interrupt the calm, and then again on the electronic waves of ‘Lapses in Reason’, which wash through the left and right speakers, throbbing like a heartbeat, as a guitar eases into play. ‘Brighter Days’ stands out – it finds the perfect middle ground between delicate and dense – with twinkling notes spread across a wide sprawl of white noise, growing into a New Age spectrum of soaring strings and brooding bass lines. It never truly reaches a climax, but its meandering rumination belies its beauty. The extravagant sounding album title may put some off, but those who embrace it may find themselves wanting to get permanently lost in Gray’s new dimension. [RH] - See more at: http://www.theliminal.co.uk/2013/07/liminal-minimals-july-2013/#sthash.ALpt3Eq3.dpuf

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At a time when musicians can work just as productively in the comfort of their kitchen as they can in the studio, why might some listeners find prolificacy objectionable? The strongest argument dictates that when an artist releases a number of albums in rapid succession, the amount of time spent on each recording is far less than an artist or group who takes more care with their work; therefore, the resulting tunes are assumed to be poorer, because time is perceived as integral to effort, and when less energy is being put into recording, the music is destined to be botched and shabby. An important counter argument comes in the form of Alex Gray, a Los Angeles-based producer who drops shit loads of material on a regular basis. It was only a month ago when I wrote about his other project D/P/I, and since then, he has released his latest album as Deep Magic. Reflections of Most Forgotten Love is stylistically opposed to Espresso Digital (though it carries similar tropes and techniques) and an arresting example of how a prolific musician can continue to produce high-quality output over a short period of time.

Generally speaking, then, the time vs. effort calculation is often misconstrued. Of course skill is earned through practice and increases with experience. But should it follow that more time need be spent in refining one’s craft than releasing material? Or can this be done simultaneously? The former line of argumentation persists, but it’s based on previous methods of production, while there is a drastic shift in the way that musicians are now able to record and the way their fans consume. Not only is the number of artists who frequently release daring and high-quality music (Sean McCann, Felicia Atkinson, and Arrington de Dionyso spring to mind) becoming more noticeable, but the dimensions of prolificacy are altering. Whereas musicians were once limited to the confides of a studio and dependent on fitting into their label’s agenda, home recordings and digital releases allow for broader opportunities, which have been fully utilized by the artist at hand.

Gray’s music tends to differ according to favored tags or labels; where D/P/I poses jagged thrusts of technical gush through tracks that alter wildly in tempo, Deep Magic embodies a concentrated, less frantic tone in its lava-lamp ambiance. Following a split cassette release with Pimmon back in February, this is the first Deep Magic full-length of 2013, and it serves as a record that adheres to an expected calm, meditative angle. The moniker is reserved for experiments within an unwound framework that is diametrically opposed to the argument against prolificacy — for if nothing else, it precisely demonstrates the artist’s collected and refined production strategy.

Reflections offers an unruffled version of the sonic planes visited elsewhere in the artist’s catalog. Stylistic preferences expose tranquil instrumentation that drifts over shallow distortion waves, surface crackle, and tape hiss: the acoustic strings on “Only You” set the tone wonderfully as they backspin in and out of crisp feedback; a babbling brook trickles across “Alone in Her Cave,” which frames Gray’s unique approach to drone music; and “I’ve Been Thinking” is all piano sequences, tropical maneuvers, and trippy echo. The samples spun throughout the album are tactfully anchored — a demonstration of the care taken within every recording and the feeling it projects. Reflections has been pitched as a spiritual release, though I wouldn’t call it that exactly. The mood is contemplative and thoughtful, an embodiment of how a musician can maintain a degree of prolificacy while demonstrating incredible tact and composure. This is bolstered by both the use of field recordings within the production and the delicate way that each sample teems throughout. The pace is mellow but engaging, where a splendid balance is struck between long-form compositions and impassioned melodies.

It’s difficult to say exactly how much time was spent assembling Reflections; the weeks separating this release and Espresso Digital offer little insight, let alone an answer as to how much effort was put in. Prolificacy plays a minor role here; even though Gray is releasing multiple albums every year, there is clearly no grand calculation to determine how good a track will sound by counting the days between each release — it’s all completely relative and dependent on creative objectivity. In the case of Reflections, Gray has crafted an album that is texturally rich, collected, and exquisitely paced — there is no hint of the project being rushed or the artist hurriedly bodging something up at the last minute to meet a deadline — these tunes are as finely sewn together as their calm and contemplative mood indicates. To claim this as one of Gray’s most essential releases wouldn’t be doing his graft any justice, but under the Deep Magic moniker, he has proved himself unique in exceeding the common expectations of prolificacy through yet another 2013 full-length that’s just as remarkable as you might have expected. -  Birkut

 

As a touring member of Sun Araw — Cameron Stallones’ loose troupe of humid dub rovers — Deep Magic‘s Alex Gray will have been exposed to his fair share of psychedelic heat. Stallones’ music doesn’t so much evoke dense tropical warmth as drown you in it, often — as on earlier releases such as Boat Trip, Beach Head and Heavy Deeds — feeling as though the very act of hearing it could get you burnt. The slow bump and grind of dub- and nyabinghi-inflected jams like “Canopy” is equally at home on a beach as it is in a dark, clammy club — it’s overriding raison d’être, it would seem, is to evoke the blazing sun and its potential effects on the human psyche by worming its way into the listener’s mind and gradually pushing back out through the pores like so many hallucinogenic beads of sweat. Even later, relatively well-polished albums like 2011′s Ancient Romans seemed to tell the stories of its titular poets and generals through their constant need to mop their brown, dust-caked brows.

Deep Magic has a similarly heated atmosphere, but instead of basing his music right in the thick of it, Alex Gray waits until the sun drops low on the horizon and the effects it has had on the day and its tired inhabitants is beginning to wear off. Previous work, for his own Deep Tapes as well as a small selection of others, has ranged from the cooled-down meditative bliss of 2010′s Illuminated Offerings to last year’s star-spangled Elemental Interactions. Wherever you start, there is a definite element of dusk or dark to Deep Magic’s work, but never so much as to present any kind of threat or uncertainty. Instead, what you get is an aftermath of sorts, a winding-down with elements of exhausted enlightenment. If Sun Araw is the slow, sweat-soaked party, Deep Magic is the subsequent lull where steam rises in rainbows from the yawning congregation.

Recently Gray seems to have settled on Preservation, the Australian label that has handled his past three releases, including the shimmering Lucid Thought and a split cassette with Pimmon. Reflections of Most Forgotten Love sets out its stall early on, with the after-hours trickle of “Only You,” featuring gentle stream samples and a sentimental swell of steel guitar, but the initial fear that the album might flat-line into nature-worshipping New Age nonsense is scrubbed during “Subtle Reactions,” a frantic Fenneszian glitch of granulated synth manipulation that weaves chopped up vocals and a dessicated clang of wedding bells through its many sparking layers. As an opening salvo the duo sound disjointed until “Alone In Her Cave” takes thematic elements from both and unearths the rich connective seam that runs down through Reflections like a faded memory.

If the overall atmosphere is one of downbeat nostalgia, there remains an underlying trace of unrest in the way Gray repeatedly returns to minced, squidgy effects such as those that rise up through “Lapses in Reason” and it’s otherwise serene ambient veneer, and the swampy, sucking undercurrent that seems to engulf the guitar and break it down to splinters in “She Can Feel My Sadness.” This, it would seem, is a turning point, where “Brighter Days” is allowed to bloom from the breakdown and tentative percussion drives it upwards into relative clarity.

With a couple of exceptions (“Only Me,” for example, is a lo-fi riposte to the opening track and one that sees Gray in doomy singer-songwriter mode, mumbling his lyrics beneath a haze of tape hiss and over a few plucked guitar strings) Reflections of Most Forgotten Love maintains the sleepy twilight atmosphere redolent throughout most of Deep Magic’s catalogue, but it is water that takes centre stage. As the guitar wanders through “She Can Feel My Sadness” against a muffled backdrop of crashing waves, windswept images of salt-spattered beach walks flick across the backs of your eyes like a tearful slideshow; “Brighter Days,” on the other hand, is full of new beginnings and squirms with forest floor dewiness as shoots begin to poke through rotting pine needles.

Ultimately, it is Gray’s willingness to dwell in this soggy dusk that makes Reflections so satisfying and Deep Magic so recognisable a project. Whether he’s huddled beneath large leaves in the aftermath of a tropical storm (“Only You”) or walking through muggy steam plumes as the sun’s faint rays dry the earth (“Something in Her Eyes”), the entire album is as slick with liquid as Sun Araw’s work is bleached by the sun. This, I guess, is where the idea of reflection comes in: from staring sadly into pools, or catching your own ghostly silhouette flickering in a wall of mist. - Steve Dewhurst       

Deep Magic – Reflections of Most Forgotten Love (Preservation)
Whilst the title may sound like a lost Márquez novel, it’s actually the third album from Los Angeles resident Alex Gray, and it’s awash with different styles and sounds. Gray is part of Sun Araw’s touring band, and their shared influences and sounds are obvious on the ear. There’s a tendency to swamp the tracks with a thick and dense layer of sounds, the delicate instrumentation sometimes fighting to be heard through the mounting din of accumulated noise (‘Subtle Reactions’). But Gray also shows a tender side – ‘Alone in Her Cave’ opens with the sound of flowing water, a simple synth refrain undulating above as a series of dull bass notes interrupt the calm, and then again on the electronic waves of ‘Lapses in Reason’, which wash through the left and right speakers, throbbing like a heartbeat, as a guitar eases into play. ‘Brighter Days’ stands out – it finds the perfect middle ground between delicate and dense – with twinkling notes spread across a wide sprawl of white noise, growing into a New Age spectrum of soaring strings and brooding bass lines. It never truly reaches a climax, but its meandering rumination belies its beauty. The extravagant sounding album title may put some off, but those who embrace it may find themselves wanting to get permanently lost in Gray’s new dimension. [RH]
- See more at: http://www.theliminal.co.uk/2013/07/liminal-minimals-july-2013/#sthash.D5GbO8rN.dpuf