Magic Wands have always treated albums as places you enter, rather than simple collections of songs. With Cascades, they continue that approach, shaping a record that feels both familiar and quietly transformative. Released via Metropolis Records, the album threads together the shimmering atmosphere of their early work with the more instinctive, stripped-back sensibility that has shaped recent releases. From the outset, Cascades unfolds with a strong sense of continuity, inviting listeners into a space where time feels elastic and memory lingers just beneath the surface.
That sense of temporal drift lies at the heart of the album’s conception. Drawing inspiration from 19th-century World’s Fair imagery, centuries-old poetry, and gothic influences, Cascades explores how the past seeps into the present, blurring eras and emotional states. Lyrically guided by Dexy Valentine, the songs feel channeled rather than narrated, conjuring visions of medieval landscapes, old European cities, and distant horizons glimpsed from above. Personal reflections quietly surface within this broader, almost mythic framework, giving the album emotional weight without anchoring it to a single time or place.
Sonically, Cascades leans into spaciousness and contrast. Detuned textures, chiming bells, and cellos create a sense of depth and motion, while mechanical, ’80s-inspired drum programming provides a stark counterbalance to the organic elements. The result is immersive rather than ornamental. Songs feel like sonic landscapes, evoking a sense of place and movement. Early decisions around tone and rhythm, particularly those established on the single “Hide,” help give the album its striking cohesion.
The duo approached Cascades with a clear vision and a tightly focused process, often building songs quickly and instinctively before refining details over time. That immediacy gives the album a cinematic flow, as if each track were a different scene in the same unfolding film. Looking both backward and forward at once, Cascades reinforces Magic Wands’ ability to create music that feels timeless rather than nostalgic, records that open onto places that feel familiar and elusive at the same time.
Interviewed over Zoom, Dexy and Chris Valentine spoke about the inspirations behind Cascades, their creative process, and how the album came together.
Could you talk about the themes behind the album?
Chris Valentine: Yeah. I guess a lot of the themes from the record were pulled from looking at some stuff from the World’s Fair, from like the 1800s. I got this 300-page book of all these different photos and stuff, and we were fascinated, both of us. We steer towards those kind of themes anyway with our music, kind of stuff that’s a little more fantasy-driven.
So that kind of piqued our interest. Dexy wrote most of the lyrics on the record, so she kind of painted the picture lyrically. But the sound, too, kind of reflected that, this fascination with just how things used to be so beautiful and ornate, but kind of dark at the same time.
Dexy Valentine: It’s a little medieval at times, a little romantic, and I feel a lot of it was channeled. It was almost like imagining traveling back in time to Europe and sort of having a bird’s-eye view of soaring over landscapes and seeing life in different time periods. And then there was a little bit of personal stuff fused into that as well.
How do you feel that mindset impacted the actual sound of the album?
Dexy Valentine: The songs musically, it’s a little more spacious. It’s not tied to a certain structure, and sounds are detuned to have a lower tone. There’s a lot of bells. There are some cellos and things that just kind of spark that feeling of maybe walking through an old church or an empty path alongside the sea somewhere in Europe, just to kind of conjure that sort of feedback that you’re in the song. From a lot of the feedback I’ve gotten from people, it’s translating very well. It’s like, “Wow, this song makes me feel like I’m in the woods and watching a sword fight by a castle and stuff.” It’s like, “Yeah, that’s kind of what we’re thinking.”
One thing that really struck me was that the drums have a very mechanical feel to them, which I like and feel is a good contrast to the other elements. Could you speak about that aspect?
Dexy Valentine: The drums are definitely more eighties-inspired, so that’s the contrast.
Chris Valentine: Yeah, the idea was with the sound too, it’s like the contrast of having the heaviness with something that’s real light. So we have light stuff and heavy stuff and try to meet the middle somewhere. I mean, the drums were definitely an eighties kind of thing, just because we like that sound the most for drums. At least right now we do, and it has the most impact when you hear it right away. So we both kind of agreed that was going to be the sound. We kind of picked out the drum sound before we even did the whole record, to have a consistency, and we kind of just worked a little bit on that to try to get that to sound right to us. So yeah, definitely the drums were important for making it sound right. It’s drum machine, but we also have Cary Lascala, who’s a great drummer. He came in and did some drumming on the record, but we used more things like high hats and percussion that he did and kind of blended that with the electronics. So it’s kind of like a hybrid electronic and real drums.
I feel the album has a very cohesive sound, so I’m wondering if you had a strong idea going into it of how you wanted it to sound, or if not, how that evolved as you made the album.
Chris Valentine: Well, the first song we did was “Hide,” which is one of the singles, and so we kind of based a lot of it off what we did with that. We really liked the guitar sounds that we were getting and the drum sound, and pretty much everything was based off of that as kind of a template, just to build the sonic picture, and then everything was just expanding off of what we did with that.
Were there any major differences in the overall process behind making this album as opposed to your previous releases?
Dexy Valentine: No, the last record we did, “Switch,” was very similar. There was a very strong vision for it from the beginning to the end, of what we wanted to create. It’s not like a collection of songs that we’ve just sewn together. We strategically plan to have it be kind of almost like a movie, where each song is just a different scene in the same movie.
Were there any challenges in making this album? Any particular songs more difficult than others, or other creative challenges?
Dexy Valentine: Just one. “Golden” was a little bit hard. I think we were going back and forth on whether there was going to be a chorus on that song or just make it a musical part, but really that was the only one. Everything came together really nice.
What was the overall timeframe of making the album?
Dexy Valentine: We worked on it on and off for about a year.
Chris Valentine: A lot of the songs were recorded really quickly. We would come up with the song usually in one day, the whole song, and so we would record and do everything in a day, and then everything after that was kind of like, “Well, maybe we should do this,” or little things afterwards. That kind of took time, and just making sure that the mixes sounded right and they all went together. This was an album that we did just the two of us, pretty much. I mean, we did go to the studio to cut drums and things like that, but all the mixing and mastering and all the production was basically the two of us making things.
What is your collaborative process generally like? Do you usually start out with lyrical ideas or the overall musical aspect?
Dexy Valentine: I think it starts out with Chris coming up with a beat, and he’ll play the bass, and then I’ll either play a piano or a guitar along with that. We’ll get a melody going, and then I’ll go through my notes on my phone. I am always writing, so I’ll go through some lyrics I’ve written, and then I’ll pull something from that. It’s easy if we have a theme or a direction, which we did with this record.
Chris Valentine: Yeah. Usually we’ll get a beat that we both like, that we agree on, and then there’s always something that we play live together. So we’re doing something live, the two of us at the same time, and that’s the foundation of every song. So whether it’s the bass and a keyboard or a bass and a guitar or whatever it is. So we’d like to have that to kind of counteract the fact that we’re producing a song as opposed to playing live with a full band.
It seems that the atmosphere is really a big part of it as a listener. Do you tend to have a sense of the sound and production you’re going for when you’re initially working on a track? Do you kind of hear it in your mind, or does that take some experimentation to get there?
Dexy Valentine: I think I hear everything first in my head, finished, and then it’s kind of massaging the sounds, less of this, more of that. It’s really just adding and subtracting a lot of effects, really, because if you strip away the effects, it’s just a very straight sound of a guitar or bass or keyboard. But Chris is really good with layering different elements to that, reverbs, delays, choruses, stuff like that. I feel like everything’s very spontaneous. We’re like, “Try this, try that. This works.”
Chris Valentine: It all happens right away. Like we were saying, the first day the bulk of the whole song is usually recorded, so we try not to really add anything else to it. It’s kind of like whatever was the first inspiration of the first of what we did. I mean, maybe we’ll add a hand clap or something later, but nothing like major. So all the major stuff happens at once, and yeah, I guess she has the ideas and I just kind of play off of the ideas that she’s having and then add my own stuff so it kind of builds the song.
Is there ever a challenge adapting new music to the live setting, in terms of the effects and layering, and just making it work in a performance?
Dexy Valentine: It’s never been easier for us live. We’ve gone through so many different phases, mixing backing tracks with live drums, live bass, an extra guitar, keyboards even. We’ve gone from a duo to a three piece to a four piece to a five piece. Now it’s just the two of us. We play guitars live and sing, and all of the music is in the background on a prerecorded track. It’s not ideal. We’d love to be able to tour with a live band, but it’s a little crazy right now to do that. Things are a lot more difficult touring than they were when we first started. So the songs translate really well because it’s everything that we recorded that we’re playing guitars along with and singing on top of.
Chris Valentine: We’re very particular about the feel of the music. So when you bring in other people to play, just playing, to get the feel right, it’s pretty tricky.
Dexy Valentine: It always changes. If we were to just do this as a live band, without those tracks, it would sound completely different. And we really want to have exactly how it is on the record translate live. You can’t have everything perfect. I mean, some bands can. It’s just that you need a massive, massive, massive budget to tour with a five piece band.
Chris Valentine: They’d have to figure out what we played on some of a lot of this stuff, and some of the stuff we just did it in one take when we were inspired. And it’s almost like we’d have to go backwards and figure out, what did I do?
Dexy Valentine: Yeah. Even with a five piece band, there would be so many elements, still missing layers that would be really hard to do live. So I feel pretty good about our live set right now because it’s translating the way we want it.
Beyond the live aspect, are there any particular ways that you feel your process has changed throughout your career? Perhaps in terms of your studio process, or as a result of the tools available?
Chris Valentine: I mean, it’s still pretty much pretty similar. It’s just that we’ve gotten better at it. I guess in the past we would rely on going into a studio and working with people to get what we wanted. We didn’t quite have the setup yet. We would do all the demos ourselves. At one point, we were just using an 8-track cassette recorder to make our demos and get it on tape. But we’ve just gotten better at recording and producing everything ourselves. So that’s kind of the main difference, I guess, than it has been in the past. And it’s just a lot easier when it’s just both of us working, as opposed to having to sit with other people and trying to tell them what you think you want. You want to say 10 different things to change the sound, but you can only get one out, and that takes 20 minutes for someone else to process. And even speaking musically, it’s like a whole other language. You just want to hear it in your head. You’re like, “Oh, it just sound like a waterfall here.” Well, it’s like, how do you explain that to somebody? It’s hard to translate what you’re saying. So we work a lot faster now. That’s the main difference. With just the two of us, getting stuff done for an actual record and making a record.
Dexy Valentine: Relying on producers works for some people, but for us, it’s just been really difficult.
Chris Valentine: Really difficult.
Dexy Valentine: I can think of a couple guys we worked with that produce that were really great, but I think we work better just the two of us.
Now that the album is out, what do you have coming up in the future?
Dexy Valentine: We actually have a deluxe version of Cascades coming out in the new year that’ll have some new tracks, maybe some different versions of the songs. We have a remix EP coming out, I think we have five remixes. We have a couple shows coming up in Los Angeles in January. We have one in June and a new album.
Chris Valentine: And possibly another tour for next year. So we might do Europe again. We haven’t been back in a minute, so we were kind of looking at that.
Purchase Cascades from magic-wands.bandcamp.com.
