Great Magnet

Enter the Magnet

Great Magnet began life in 2006 not as a band, but as a recording project created by frontman Adam Sullivan in his eponymous studio, Great Magnet Recording. Tracking songs written over five previous years with bassist buddy Nathan Alfaro and their drummer pal Paul Bertolino, the trio explored the studio space of Great Magnet Recording’s initial location in the pastoral heiffer lands of rural Petaluma. The songs were tight, poppy numbers that nonetheless rocked with a ballsy analog grit, most clocking in at three minutes or less.

In 2009 it morphed into something much, much more when Adam and Nate decided to “make it real” by enlisting the permanent services of guitarist Jason Reed and drummer Jeff Piehl. Jason’s masterful playing encompasses so many techniques (slide, fingerstyle, flatpicking) and genres (blues, psychedelia, rock, folk) it’s hard for him to NOT add depth and dimension to each Sullivan-penned initial composition. And Jeff? The guy’s just a complete badass. ‘Nuff said.

Jason and Jeff’s unique creative approaches led to an ongoing program of compositional enrichment over the next two years of jamming, playing live, and recording…done entirely at Great Magnet Recording. The band’s musical wheelhouse expanded exponentially and their ability to read each other’s musical minds went through the roof.

The resulting stew is at the same time thickly psychedelic and satisfyingly poppy, with imminently accessible songwriting floating on top of layer upon layer of delicious sonic nuggets. Yet despite the obvious craft and detail that constantly bubbles up from each recorded track, it at all times retains a quite obvious live-in-the-room aesthetic which is both intentional, fostered, and very real. Most of what you hear was played, improvised, and captured on-the-spot…four guys in one room playing their asses off.

Great Magnet’s first full-length album, Space Bar, was released on January 22nd, 2013. Hot on the heels of mixing and mastering said effort, the band is already at it again writing new songs every week, only this time it’s a group effort. As such, the sound will continue to morph into new and unexpected things….for them AND for you, dear listener.

With such an uninterrupted flow of musical collaboration in play, it’s likely that we’ll see Great Magnet keep the cap off the fountain from here on in: expect a steady stream of singles and EPs hitting the interwebz starting in early 2013 and continuing up to and perhaps beyond the Zombie Apocalypse.

Thank you for listening.