The Return To Form Black Magick Party

A potential genius?

An attentive look at the cover of Pop Levi's first album evokes different associations with images of rock musicians whose heyday has fallen on 60's. There is something from John Lennon in this black and white photo, a little bit from Sid Barret in his slightly insane look and after you read the album's title The Return To Form Black Magic Party the whole picture gets enriched with echo of rock music's psychedelic years. Overall, Pop Levi looks like a potential talent, therefore he must be able to suggest something interesting. In away, his debut album coincides with the aforementioned associative chain. The Return To Form Black Magic Party is definitely rock album, it is based on influences of musicians of 60's and 70's, it strives to follow the modern indie fashion and it wants expand its boarders. Pop Levi has taken these principles as the bases for his songs and decorated them with pop atmosphere, his high vocals and glam rock arrangements. You are right, the stylistic definition turned out to be complex, but on the other hand now every person who reads this article may say precisely if he wants to know more about the album or not. 

The Return To Form Black Magic Party – astral rock'n'roll

Actually, Pop Levi suggests a more intriguing formulation to describe his music when calling it astral rock'n'roll and this sounds much more attractive and, above all, capacious enough to fit all the aforementioned characteristics. The album opens with drum peal and fuzzy bass of up tempo Sugar Assault Me Now, which displays the main Pop Levi's features – dirty guitar sound, disco hand claps and vocals a la Mark Bolan meets Prince. This is one of the strongest compositions of the album, its simple but catchy melodies make a great pop rock hit out of the song. Pick Me Up Uppercut stands close to it, though the rock'n'roll sprit was expressed here better. The album has some slower pieces too. For example Blue Honey - a song, which was released as a single before the album's issue. It features distinct influences of old school rock, particularly Jimmi Hendrix. A perfectly reflected atmosphere of those years acquired some new colors due to indie oriented sound. Pop Levi doesn't mind acoustic sound: such songs like Skip Ghetto and From The Day That You Were Born are filled with light hippie moods in the vein of John Lennon and psychedelic notes.       

Pop Levi knows how glam rock should sound in a new millennium

The Return To Form Black Magic Party for the first album is a pretty strong record, there is a good share of interesting songs. But Pop Levi looks more like an oddity on the indie scene, his love to old rock is too obvious. He tries to accumulate reach legacy of British scene and present it in a new wrapper barely flavoring it with his own thoughts. Yes, The Return To Form Black Magic Party is capable in a way to afford the indie/garage music a variant for development. But with whose hands he is doing it? Where is a personal contribution? In a big scale he just plays the chords that somebody else has already played with only one difference that consists in the new sound. It is important to observe objectivity here. Pop Levi wants to pen good songs, he likes a certain kind of music, he knows how to play it, it comes out nice and he is even having some personal thoughts. But such a picture is characteristic for almost every obscure band, Pop Levi's superiority is just in that fact that he has a little bit more of this thoughts and has forces for a future development. So far, his work can be summarized as follows: if you always wanted to know how glam rock may sound in a new millennium than you have a chance now – Pop Levi will eagerly show you what it is.