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Within the indie world, Buffalo-born, Los Angeles-based Elliott Douglas is making a new style, centered on fusion and fluidity. Working underneath the moniker M.A.G.S., the artist combines parts of prog rock, pop punk, and indie rock for a head-spinning sound that’s each eccentric and unbelievably satisfying. An completely solo mission, Douglas performs every instrument himself whereas writing from the guts — a self-sufficient artistic follow he discovered solace in after being homeschooled by a spiritual household. Since these days, Douglas’ wings have unfold, serving to him land in a nook of the music world that solely he had the map to find and develop.
His newest mission, Destroyer, continues Douglas’ delicate exploration with devices and sounds, one by which the artist makes clear he felt unaffected by any pressures to stay in a inflexible style or indie headspace. “This is the first album I’ve felt comfortable enough with my sound to explore that side of my interests,” he says. And there’s little doubt that nothing is held again on the new LP. He’s utterly deserted the thought of sticking to at least one model of music. After all, artists have begun focusing on the affect, not essentially the style. “I think we have to,” he provides. “That’s the only way to stand out. That’s the only way that people are going to remember you.”
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While a lot of indie music has been made for and by outcasts, M.A.G.S. remains to be a real outlier. With early influences like Underoath, the Strokes, and Radiohead, combined with his familial music style of early ’60s and ’70s singer-songwriters, in addition to his “fascination with the textures, patterns, [and the] freedom of jazz,” he’s established a distinct segment for himself. It’s discovered inside his personal head, observing and producing what’s persistently bouncing round his thoughts. “It’s all up here,” he says, pointing to his temple. “There’s an audience for everything. Social media has made it so you can build a world around yourself, with the most obscure, weird stuff. If that’s true and you’re doing something that is unique and different and authentic, you’re setting yourself up to be widely received.”
There’s no true method to outline M.A.G.S. With his impressed, genreless sound, it’s inconceivable to residence in on the place he matches in. Douglas agrees: “I personally don’t classify my music to myself because I can’t. I think a lot of people who don’t know my music ask, ‘What genre are you?’ And there’s not a word.” One might argue he’s indie prog, particularly when listening to “Sins,” a single off the LP. “It was the jumping-off point for Destroyer,” Douglas explains with a smile. “It got shelved. It wasn’t in line with anything that I did on the self-titled, and it felt a little too dark. But I sent it to my manager, and they were like, ‘This is one of the best songs I’ve heard from you. Are you going to release this?’”
M.A.G.S. additionally explores the darker aspect of his repertoire on Destroyer. Having been entranced by hardcore and metalcore at a younger age, it was solely a matter of time earlier than he delved into the heavier aspect of his tastes. “[‘Sins’] has some riffs that I had been working on that are a little more left-of-center,” he says. “I think that’s how I like to describe my sound. It’s indie, but it’s not quite always going to be the best thing for a playlist.” The breakdowns all through Destroyer cement his journey into heavier music. His influences from Underoath are notably evident as effectively, and he even asks himself when monitoring his personal drums, “What would Aaron [Gillespie] do?
He takes that affect and implements it in his music, with out it being a standard “hardcore” document. Using and unraveling its parts, Douglas performs with the concepts of different rock genres, particularly post-rock alongside his heavier inspirations. The guitar chords in “Wednesday” stand out, incorporating the ambiance and delicate nature of the style whereas tapping into that hardcore affect within the bridge. With its intricate time signatures, it’s exhausting to imagine that Douglas wasn’t initially a guitarist. In reality, he was a drummer, however watching an outdated bandmate play guitar pushed him to hunt out different devices. “Watching him play guitar made me want to start playing guitar,” he says. “It was a wild tangent that I took at the time — ‘I want to try something else. I have more in my head than just playing the drums.’ And guitar was calling me for a very long time.”
Douglas considers himself an “instrumentalist,” before everything. As a lot as he appreciates songwriting, he views instrumentals as his past love. And with his dedication to exploring the items of various sounds that stay in his thoughts, he’s achieved a degree of fusion that’s admirable, particularly within the fashionable music panorama. “I think we live in a time where the term ‘genre’ is a little more vague. You’re seeing a lot more cross-pollination between hip-hop and rock music. There’s a lot more rock music in pop music now. And that’s all good and well, but I don’t really fit into any of that.”
He doesn’t appear too involved with the reception from his viewers. Douglas enjoys the album he’s put collectively, acknowledging the components of notion and reception inside a fanbase. “Something will click in their brains, ‘Oh, there’s something about this that reminds me of something I already know,’” he says. “All consumers know is what they already know. If there’s something there that they connect to, or have already connected to, I think that is a lot more impactful than trying to be something.” Regardless of his place as an instrumentalist, lyrically, he’s an open ebook, speaking earlier experiences and eventualities he’s not all the time essentially conscious of when writing the songs.
In the top, Douglas believes there’s no actual originality anymore. There are solely so many chords in Western music. To him, it’s a matter of being artistic and progressive with what’s already there. “There are some artists who are not original in the sense that they are reimagining something that does already exist, but they’re doing it in a way where they are influential in the way that they do it,” he explains.
And it’s exhausting to not see that perspective — many fashionable songs are created with the identical 4 chords and the identical songwriting components. But Douglas’ creativity and innovation with the trail of sound that’s already been laid out are exemplary, and his capability to fuse so many genres collectively is dizzying. Destroyer is a testomony to an satisfying, eclectic fusion that may certainly seize the eye of those that can determine with the infinite record of genres he embodies. And what goes on in his thoughts is rattling effectively influential.
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