DANCE ZINE SCIONAV.COM VOL. 3

While many “nu-disco” DJs continue to obsess over artifacts from the past (re-edits of old songs, lost
punk-funk B-sides) and drop way too much money on obscure vinyl on eBay, Midnight Magic quietly
elevates the game with brand-new music that feels instantly classic. From their 12-inch “Beam Me Up”
to remixes for Corinne, Azari & III and Cut Copy, the NYC-based band makes songs impossibly rich,
catchy and full-sounding. Sounding this good doesn’t happen overnight. Since their late teens, producers
Andrew Raposo (also the bassist) and Morgan Wiley (keyboards) have played together in numerous projects,
including Dim Mak hip-hop outfit Automato and disco house superstars Hercules & Love Affair. Along
the way, they soaked up knowledge from DFA label producers James Murphy and Tim Goldsworthy, and
befriended vocalist Tiffany Roth, horn-player Carter Yatusake and the five other members who make up
the group. “We feel kind of like a hillbilly family,” says Raposo, on the phone from Midnight Sun, the
Brooklyn studio where he and Wiley are producing Classixx, Paze Infinite and a host of other artists.
We asked Raposo how the magic happens.
Talk about some of the band’s shared loves, musically
and aesthetically.
We all love pizza. We all love the realm of the surreal
and the psychedelic, and horror films in particular.
We all love Michael Jackson and Parliament and
Bohannon and Sylvester—those are the four that we
talk about a lot. The list goes on: classic soul and funk
and disco, tropicália music from Brazil, the Ethiopiques
compilations, Selda Bagcan and all the Turkish psych
rock stuff.
How do you think growing up in New York has
influenced you?
It has made me a little paranoid and neurotic, but
extremely good at dealing with people and crazy
situations. It’s made me fascinated by people and their
lives. I don’t think there’s a more public city in the
Western Hemisphere. I mean, I’m a rich kid from the
Upper East Side, but you wouldn’t know it when you’re
just walking around in the street. Everybody else could
be from anywhere and you have to deal with them. You
have to sit next to them on the train, you have to listen
to what they’re listening to and look at what they eat.
Tell me about working with Eric Broucek, the former
DFA engineer.
He is a zealot about the way he deals with sound. He
sees sound as if everything is a landscape. The tree off
in the distance is the synth line, the hill over here is the
bassline. He is an artist unto himself, and as a result,
you can listen to his mixes a hundred times and you
don’t get bored. James [Murphy] is the same way. Try to
tell James Murphy the high hat is too loud and he’ll slap
your hand away from the board.
Speaking of the studio, how do you guys get everything
sounding like it does?
With computer software that same string patch is
always that same string patch, unless you put a different
filter on it. We can’t work that way. It’s not that we don’t
like it, it’s not how we’re programmed. We’re so used to
turning knobs and plugging cords in and out. When
people hear something in our songs and it sounds old,