Recently I was able to schedule a Zoom call with Elliott Douglass, aka M.A.G.S., to discuss the inspiration behind his new reimagined version of Destroyer that released this past week via Smartpunk Records, called Creator. In this interview, we chatted about how Creator came to be, his collaborations that made this record possible, as well as a quick preview of his fall tour with Barely Civil. Creator is available for purchase here.
First of all, it’s great to see you again Elliott! Your new reimagined album called Creator, will be released tomorrow via Smartpunk Records. Can you tell me what inspired this record that offers a nice contrast to your last album that you see over my shoulder here, called Destroyer?
Yeah, definitely. I think the original sort of inspiration was just to kind of prolong the life of Destroyer, really. I think when an album comes out, the shelf life of an album is getting shorter and shorter as we progress further into humanity. Things just don’t last as long and I felt like as much as I put into the songwriting and all of the different elements that go into making an album, with Destroyer, I felt like it kind of didn’t exactly do what I wanted it to do…if I’m being totally honest. I was really proud of how those songs turned out, the production, and my performances and everything. And I think it came out at just like a really wild time in my personal life, too. And there’s a lot of things that were shifting. And I kind of, even personally, I kind of just forgot about it. The album came out in August, and then we did the tour, and then I had to jump right into just getting my life together. And it was right around the time that I was thinking about leaving LA as well. So there’s just a lot of external things happening at that time. But I had the idea to make an acoustic album originally. I’m like, well what can I do to kind of bring the album back into focus? And that’s where the idea of the acoustic album came from. And I started just making demos. When I was still in LA, I started making demos just with my acoustic guitar and just trying to get the ideas down. And I think because the songs on Destroyer are so complex, I think sitting down with an acoustic <guitar> and just trying to play them all the way through, it was a bit of a challenge that took some time to get it to feel good. And over time I decided I wanted to really try to experiment a little bit with the production. I’m like, if it’s going to be an acoustic album, and it’s going to be a M.A.G.S. acoustic album, how can I push this outside of the norm of what people would expect?
Do you typically compose on acoustic guitar?
It really depends. I think sometimes I tend to sort of lean on the electric guitar just because that’s just what’s available and easy for me to wrap my head around. But I think that the acoustic guitar is actually a really powerful songwriting tool, because it is really just…it’s everything you need and nothing you don’t. And so you’re kind of forced to sit there and make stuff that sounds good. You can’t rely on the tones of the electric or the effects or anything. It’s just bare bones. So being able to sit down and kind of focus on what the songs meant to me and what the sounds were supposed to sound like on acoustic, that kind of required me to slow down a bit. And it took a minute for me to kind of start thinking about it out of the box. And I never really intended to make a remixed, or reimagined, album. That was not my initial idea. I was just gonna make an acoustic album that had layers and harmonies and just almost more of like…a Disney soundtrack, or something just like very elaborate, with a lot going on instrumentally and adding strings and layers. And I think, in a way, Creator kind of is almost like “modern orchestral” with future orchestral kind of stuff.
Creator does have a bit of an ambient feel to it. I don’t know if that was intentional or not, but you also challenge yourself vocally throughout the album, too. So what went into the production and recording of not only the vocals, but also just the overall instrumentation?
It’s funny, because the vocals are all the original vocals from the demos. I was intending on re-recording a lot of the vocals. And I’m like, “Oh, I can do this better. This part can be better.” But once we built the arrangements around the demos, I didn’t want to change anything. Sometimes when you have the intention to re-record something, and it almost becomes so locked in, or baked into the arrangement, that it’s like we got to work around this now. We have to take the vocals that I had and make them sound good. A lot of those vocals were done in one or two takes. “Wednesday,” specifically, was a song that when I was mixing it, I struggled with it a lot because the vocals were distorted as they were going in. And I’m using the demo, and I don’t really care. I’m just like, I’m going to re-record these anyway. But then I tried re-recording those vocals over and over again, and I couldn’t quite capture the same performance, I guess. So I just kind of leaned into the distortion a little bit and made them more distorted, and tried to kind of find a spot where they sounded clear. But the distortion was adding to the song…As far as the other production goes, that was very much a marathon of creativity, in a sense. It was me and then my friends, Ehmed (Nauman) and Micah (Miller). This was actually the first collaborative project that I worked on for M.A.G.S.. So a lot of these arrangements and the production ideas were made…some of it was me just sitting down and I’d make a beat, or I’ll lay something down, and then after a couple hours, I would tap out, and then Ehmed would come in and he would add his thing, and then he would tap out, and then Micah would come in and add his thing. We kind of would go in a circle. We did that for nine days straight, and finished the whole album, kind of like in this sort of creative flow state, if you will.
That’s a pretty cool way of encapsulating everything that went on behind the scenes for that. I always appreciate that from interviews, too. Remix albums tend to get a bad reputation, because some of them have been more well-received by audiences than others. Did you set any specific goals for yourself for this particular reimagined record?
Sure, yeah. I didn’t really think of this as a remix album, and I didn’t really have any expectations going into it. I think this was honestly a big lesson in learning how to let go of expectations and learning how to trust other people and their ideas And I think when I started doing M.A.G.S. over 10 years ago, I started it because I was tired of playing in various local bands and trying to get everyone on the same page and trying to be a united front towards one goal of let’s get on the road. Let’s put out albums. Let’s actually do this for real. I kind of just got tired of everybody just kind of not having the same amount of vision, I suppose, and I got let down a lot too. So I think M.A.G.S. was me just taking the reins and internalizing everything so that if I failed, it was only my fault really, and if I succeeded, then it’s like, cool, I did it. But I think this album kind of opened me back up to what it means to collaborate. And how important it can be to let other people explore their ideas within your vision, if that makes sense? I remember showing these demos to Ehmed, and he is somebody that I really look up to. He plays guitar in my band, but I look up to him because he thinks about music differently than anyone I’ve ever met, and his ideas come so quickly and naturally. When I was like, let’s do an acoustic album, he was like, bet. Let’s do it. And then we were at his apartment, and I was kind of telling him what I was thinking, and he was like, Well, this is what I was thinking. He showed me some wild shit that I was like, “Oh, this is very outside of what I was expecting or what I was thinking, but let’s see what happens.” And by the end of the first session, we went in order for the first few songs from Destroyer, and I remember Micah, his roommate, had come home from work, and we were kind of stuck at the very end of the song. We had done a lot of the composition for the first half. And then by the time we got to the bridge part, both of us were like, what do we want to do here? And then he was just like, let’s see what Micah has to do. Because Micah is a dubstep producer; maybe he’ll just be able to throw some drums over this. And then he started making a drum beat, and just popped it in. And I’m like, this is crazy! I don’t know what this is…But I think by the third day, we started to kind of find our pace. And I was feeling a lot less nervous about the process. Luckily, for the first couple of days, I was like, I don’t know what this is, kind of go with the flow kind of thing…
What are some of your favorite artists who’ve either reimagined their own songs or done remixes successfully, in your opinion?
That’s an interesting question. I feel like I have yet to see any other artists do something like this. I don’t think I can quote any other artist that has taken their whole album and just re-done it in a different genre, per se. But what I really like is when an artist will take their songs and play them differently live. You see them after 10 years of playing <a song>, and there’s just different stuff, different melodies, and there’s different arrangements. I think that that’s kind of what I was thinking when I was going into this. Eventually I’m going to want to play these songs differently <live>. I already play some of my older music differently when we do shows, and so I figured there’s got to be a different angle that I can take when I play these songs live. I’m already kind of working on how I can combine Destroyer and Creator in a live setting. That’s kind of my goal. How can I make these songs meld together?
That was kind of leading me to my next question, actually. You mentioned you will probably play variations of these songs live, but I also really enjoyed some of the laid back acoustic atmosphere that you put on “Sequence 3”, which is a different version of “Elephant.” Additionally, what do you hope fans will take away from listening to Creator?
Well, a funny story about “Sequence 3,” which is the reimagined version of “Elephant,” we started working on that song, and think it was day three of recording, and it was the same day that The Beatles had put out that single <“Now and Then”> with the vocals that they’d taken from the demo. And it was just all over the internet. And so Ehmed and I were like, I think we went to get lunch or something, and we’re listening to this song and it’s like, oh, this is crazy that they did this with AI, or whatever. And I had this idea of why don’t we just do like a Beatles version of “Elephant”? Let’s try to take the Beatles vibes and just put it into this song. And so I think we referenced “Hello, goodbye” and we referenced “Penny Lane” a lot and “Day Tripper,” too. We kind of tried to take some of the stuff from those songs and just inject it into “Sequence 3.” That track kind of does have a bit of a Sgt. Pepper kind of vibe where there’s a lot going on behind the scenes of it. But I want people, when they hear these songs…my intention was to be able to bring other people in. I know there are people that are fans of what I do with M.A.G.S., but I think I wanted this album to be like a bridge to people, allowing me mentally, to let me do other things besides just rock music, indie rock. I’ve always thought that like M.A.G.S. has a lot of pop sensibility, and there’s definitely a lane for some different kinds of music that can be made that is still M.A.G.S., but doesn’t necessarily sound like anything that I’ve put out before. So I think this album is sort of like the gateway to be able to get to the next thing.
Do you have any personal preferences about the way you listen to it, whether it’s through headphones, a certain headspace, or what’s your kind of feeling on how you feel this record should be interpreted/enjoyed?
Well, headphones are always the way if you’re gonna really listen to it and really kind of dive in, headphones are always your best bet. I think there’s definitely some type of “night drive” kind of vibes as well. And to be totally fair we smoked so much weed while we were making this album. <Laughter> So, I think it kind of lends itself to that sort of headspace. It’s funny because I’ve actually stopped smoking weed since then. I decided that it was just time to hang it up. And I think it’s been good for me so far. But when we were making it, that was a very big part of the inspiration. We’d sit down, and we would just pass a J around, and then just get to work.
So one of the last questions I have for you is, as an artist who has a great vision for his music and seemingly enjoys pushing the envelope of creativity in their art, what’s coming down the road next for M.A.G.S.? And what do you kind of expect people to react to this record when they hear it in full tomorrow?
I’m already starting to work on the next album! I don’t usually do well if I don’t have a project to work on. So I’ve started working on my next batch of songs, and I really want people when they hear this album to…I don’t know it sounds kind of lame, but I just want them to enjoy it for what it is. I do like the idea of being able to listen to it and then go back to Destroyer and compare the two versions. That was the intention of making a second album connected to Destroyer. But at the end of the day, I want Creator to kind of just stand on its own as a good album that people can enjoy. And again, maybe there’s people who didn’t like Destroyer, that will hear Creator and be like this a totally different kind of take. Let me go back and listen to Destroyer again. And I just want there to be this sort of synergy between them.
That’s awesome. So the last, last question I have for you is are there any conversations about either bringing in outside voices, you already mentioned collaborators that worked on the album, but is there anything coming down the pike that you maybe are considering doing for the fourth record?
I did have some aspirations to do some features on Creator, but the timing just didn’t quite work out for this next record. But yeah, I do have the intention to make it a bit more collaborative. And I do want to go back and work with Ehmed and Micah and do some writing. And I had plans to go to LA at the end of this year or so, in October, I guess, to do a little bit of writing. And ahead of the tour that I’m just about to do. I collected a lot of the ideas that I’ve been writing over the last couple years and just kind of sorting through them, and trying to figure out the kind of vibe for the next album. So I think there will be some different voices on the next album. I think it’s time to open it up to see what else M.A.G.S. can sound like.
That’s awesome. It’s great seeing you again, and best of luck on your tour in October with Barely Civil!
Thank you so much for taking the time, Adam.
Of course!
