Blast!: Interview

The Magic Number

The Crimson sat down with Hatim Belyamini '99, Shawn Feeney '99 and David Horn '00 of the Magic Number, as well as Jon Natchez '99, their guest saxophonist.

THC: You mostly improvise; do you plan to do anything special this Friday?

Hatim Belyamini: Well, we usually don't play traditional rock and roll, and this show will be significantly different.

THC: So this time you'll be playing...

David Horn: Louder music, electric instruments. We do play electronic but usually not electric.

THC: Did you meet here at Harvard?

HB: Me and Shawn knew each other first. We were roommates in junior year and last year lived off campus. The idea for this band started a little more than a year ago. We had been jamming for a while, and we decided to take this to a greater level, and we thought that David Horn was the perfect addition.

Joe Natchez: We should talk about our musical backgrounds, which is quite varied.

Shawn Feeney: I started doing electronic music in junior high. I learnt piano and bass guitar in high school and was in a death metal band, a progressive punkcore band, a jazz group and Jon's ska band. Oh yeah, I played in Omnipresence, a live hip-hop group last year. All sorts of genres.

HB: My first formal training was classical piano. I was also in a progressive hardcore band with Shawn and Jon called This is My Rifle. And I've been experimenting with electronic music--sequencing, MIDI, a K-2000 sampler.

David Horn: I don't have much musical training. I just learnt the guitar a little bit and I studied the recorder in school. And then I studied the sitar and tabla, and I taught myself Tuvan throat singing, supposedly.

JN: Do a little bit. [Horn proceeds to give an impressive demonstration.]

JN: David is responsible for the growing number of throat singers around campus. They've all studied with him. It's eerie.

DH: I was in a no-name band with some down-and-outs. We played the music of Iron Maiden, Pantera, Chuck Berry... [Room breaks into laughter]

SF: David is ever the mysterious one. We've been playing with him for years and this is the first I've heard of it.

DH: I was also in this band Mayaderen. Some of the ex-members are going to be playing.

JN: The Red Essentials.

DH: Yeah. And then I ended up here.

THC: So what do you guys think of the other bands at the concert?

JN: I've played with the Red Essentials once. I was almost going to play at this concert with them too, which would've been very exciting. I think they're doing some really interesting stuff.

HB: I've worked with Pablo, who's doing keyboard for them, with a lot of sound design projects. I'm excited to hear them.

JN: The band that's headlining, Lockgroove, is quite a phenomenon. They go kind of nuts, in a very ethereal way.

DH: John should mention something about his music background.

JN: I'm a sax player. I'm from around here and since high school I've been playing in a ska band. We've put out some albums and had some tours.

HB: They're called Skavoovie and the Epitones.

DH: I didn't pick the name.

THC: So what do you say is the hardest part of being a musician at Harvard?

HB: The women. [Laughter.]

SF: Coming from a rock background, the hardest part is just finding practice spaces. The music building has all these tiny practice rooms that you can use if you're playing piano or flute but...

JN: They even say "no drums, no amplified instruments allowed." I have a lot of friends in music school and the hardest part sometimes for me is seeing the contrast with the lifestyle of a musician here. It's not really a difference of talent. It's just that people have so much less time. Scheduling rehearsals, forget about it.

THC: Part of the reason the Crimson is organizing (Blast!) is because we want to create a sense that there is an on-campus music scene.

SF: It's tough. This university, I think, is very conservative in the arts. There are people doing more alternative forms of music, but it's just not supported. Or it's harder to organize it.

JN: The tradition of most American colleges is to be bastions of creative or experimental music, or even experimental forms of mainstream music like indie rock. At Harvard, I think there's a desire to be culturally conservative. I was shocked that people had such a negative reaction to the Violent Femmes concert last year. At any other college, people will get very excited about a band that original and that distinctive playing. Here you can see the UC posters. "Who wants the Violent Femmes? We want Third Eye Blind!"

THC: So why should anyone come and see the Magic Number?

HB: Because we're the exception!

DH: All the reactions have been good.

SF: That's the thing. It's not like we're playing insane person's music.

JN: I'm a spectator for them most of the time, and there are always incredibly positive reactions. It's very accessible music, mainly because it's so personal and expressive.

DH: I think a lot of people have never really thought to look for it. A number people who've come to our shows, say afterwards, "I've never heard anything like that, but I really like it."

SF: A lot of people think "new music" and they think "weird, abrasive music." For a long time, a lot of composers had the idea that "if the public likes it, we must be doing something wrong." [A long discussion on Dada and composer Philip Glass ensues]

SF: In some ways, we're trying to go against the grain of most bands. We're not commercially geared in any sense. I can't think of any other band today that only exists live. With any other band, you can just buy their album, and there's this expectation that are their concert they'll be recreating this perfect quintessence of what's represented on the album.

JN: I'm sure that there are other bands

that only exist when they're live, but you never hear about them. It's interesting that you don't hear about bands unless they put out albums and enter the commercial realm.

HB: There's a personality factor too. In the previous show, David Horn proceeded to play a flute line that he plays frequently, and Shawn proceeded to attack him with his "alien simulator"--his pitch shifter--and that's something you can't get across unless you're there.

THC: What's the best part about being in a band?

DH: The magic.