Magic Arm - Bootsy Bootsy EP (Switchflicker / Peacefrog)
3/5
By: Emily Kaiser
Bootsy Bootsy, the EP out this week by soloist Marc Regisford who goes by the tag of Magic Arm, makes even less sense than the title. Standing tall at five tracks and twenty minutes long, the Oompa-Loompa-sized disc offers just about as much intrigue and choreography, but without the clever lessons.
A dogged determination to stick to songs of around three minutes long ultimately plummets this EP's potential to succeed. No track is above the elusive 4-minute mark, excepting the 4'03" remix version of the title track that brings the EP to its close. A Beta Band reincarnation such as this needs breathing room to keep itself together.
Magic Arm definitely has some interesting tones in there - the underlying drones of 'Said Things' for example are reminiscent of a hurdy-gurdy, and the finger-plucking sounds grab attention by being appropriately out of place. But the point of the trick is never revealed, and in your basic three minutes it just comes out as weirdness without a purpose. There is a reason it doesn't take much to understand a pop song, and this is it. If Magic Arm is going to feed us seeds, he has to give us the fruit, too. Or does he want us to run around pecking at each other?
Speaking of irritating bird habits, Marc Regisford, the man behind the "magic" (sorry, I really had to), even pecked out two minutes of his cover of LCD Soundsystem's 'Daft Punk is Playing at My House'. Sacrificing promise again just to fit the form, his approach to this cover epitomizes his more original attempts at "liberation". Title track 'Bootsy Bootsy' makes contact with the eerie idea of fun, but most tracks just fail in their lack of advancement.
According to his press release, Regisford "laboriously taught himself how to use Pro-Tools" to create his self-defined category-defying sound. This resulting EP, a preview to his debut album Do Lists, Do Something, out in May, is just about a step above a clever Facebook status. Not that I don't appreciate those when I come across them, and there's certainly some sounds to be appreciated under the surface of the EP. But just like sitting in front of your MySpace does not make you more friends, sitting in front of your MacBook, no matter how laborious you make it, can only produce so much music. I hope to be surprised by potential though. After all, he could have a MacBook Pro.
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