We are pleased to be co-releasing the latest album from Magnetic Ghost on Round Bale Recordings. Magnetic Ghost is a project led by Andrew Larson, a veteran of the Minneapolis underground music scene. Larson first came to our attention through his group, Whitesand/Badlands, whose self-released double album Seeding The Cloud may be one of the best, little-known albums to come out of MN in the past decade. Since that group dissolved, Larson has continued on working under the name Magnetic Ghost with different contributors. On Pixels, his second full-length, he is joined on several tracks by long-time collaborator and former W/B bandmate, Holly Habstritt-Gaal. Over three years in the making, as the recordings were at one point completely lost from a laptop, Pixels is arguably Magnetic Ghost’s boldest statement yet. It’s a sprawling and immersive album that feels more like an eight-part song cycle, building and gaining its power as each track unfolds. What this means, of course, is Pixels falls outside the algorithmic, playlist-focused nature of our current musical landscape. For those willing to spend any amount of time with this album as a whole, though, you will be greatly rewarded. People have and will make plenty of comparisons to the work of Radiohead regarding Pixels, and that’s a fair take, but in our minds Magnetic Ghost is closer in spirit to the rural psychedelia of the great Flying Saucer Attack, albeit offering a more in-focus, technicolor variation of that dreamy, feedback-drenched sound. If you happen to catch Magnetic Ghost live, and you should, you’ll understand where we are coming from. At their core, these are folk songs awash in atmospheric beauty. With that, we hope you’ll dive into Magnetic Ghost’s celestial ether and dive in deep.

RBR-016: Magnetic Ghost – Pixels LP/CD ($16/$10)

Magnetic Ghost, the project of Minneapolis musician Andrew Larson, is an ever-evolving amorphous beast, which constantly changes size, form and sound from release to release. From barrages of post-rock noise to lo-fi loner psych and ethereal space folk, Larson’s Magnetic Ghost possesses a vast and vibrant sonic spectrum. Yet he might have reached an artistic peak with Pixels, which is perhaps his most accessible and profound record to date. 

Larson steers the ship that is Magnetic Ghost through complex experimental-pop (“Does it Dream?”), baroque-shoegaze hybrids (“Reality Distortion Field”) and euphoric moments of psychedelic sunshine (“Delete”), all while retaining a singular and unique vision. 

Throughout the album, Larson proves himself to be a jack-of-all-trades in the studio, with vocals, acoustic, electric, and bowed guitars, pedal steel, synth, bass, percussion, and drums all included amongst his credits. Holly Habstritt-Gaal, another regular member of the Magnetic Ghost crew, also lends her stellar voice and amplified hard drive to the proceedings. 

Larson and Habstritt-Gaal together conjure up images and atmospheres of barren icy landscapes, shimmering cosmic oceans informed by a world disintegrating socially and politically, byte by byte, pixel by pixel. The pair constructed this wistful, otherworldly sonic universe at Larson’s Magnetic Mansion studio with additional tracking from Habstritt-Gaal in Amsterdam, NL. The LP was mixed Neil Weir and Larson at Blue Bell Knoll in Minneapolis, MN.