With two brand new EPs ‘Soul Eater’ and ‘Moon Eater’ to delve into, we asked MAGNOLIA PARK to tell us everything we need to know about the records.
→ HeartStopper
Joshua Roberts: An interesting fact about this song is the band that’s featuring is called Grieve. The vocalist Scott has been a long-time friend of Freddie and Tristan, dating back to their high school days. On top of that, Scott was the original drummer of Magnolia Park before being replaced with Joe, who is their current drummer. Also, the guitarist of Grieve is Evan Draper, who’s shot most of our music videos to date. So a lot of Magnolia Park family members are in this song.
→ Wishful Thinking
Joshua Roberts: Something cool about this song is that the idea was conceived in the forest. Freddie likes to go to this nature path sometimes to write on his acoustic, and he came up with the first draft of the chorus while sitting on a log. The next day he brought it to the studio, hoping there was time to write another song. Luckily we had a few days left, and we fleshed out the rest with the band and our producers, Andrew Wade and Andy Karpovck.
→ Breathing tracking vocals was a hot experience
Joshua Roberts: Vince brought in the demo to Breathing. We worked on it at the Audio Compound with legendary producers Andrew Wade and Andy Karpovck. While tracking my vocals, Andrew and Andy pushed me very hard and made me run half a mile before I could track. Sometimes they would bring in hot sauce, and I would take some before tracking. That day I was on fire, to say the least.
→ Unholy Heart
Tristan Torres: An interesting fact about this song is that the hook was written to the 100 gecs instrumental of their song ‘Torture Me’. Freddie and I are huge gecs fans, so they wanted to see what they came up with while writing the instrumental. We wrote it in my girlfriend’s bedroom while on lots of caffeine, and Freddie was watching Twilight on his phone.
→ Soul Eater and Moon Eater meaning
Tristan Torres: I was really inspired by anime and the Gorillaz while making the band, and I always wanted to do something like that for Magnolia Park. So I came up with our character Baku and started to build a world for him. Heart Eater, Soul Eater, and Moon Eater are antagonists in Baku’s story. I wanted to have songs that gave a vibe to what each character is and would be theme songs to who they are. Both Soul and Moon Eater have completely different experiences while listening to the music.
→ Bludluv
Joshua Roberts: A fun fact about this song is that the house beat at the end was not intended to be there. Towards the end of the creation of the song, Tristan came up with the idea of creating the house beat. So we completely scraped the ending that was already there while Tristan put together what would be the ending of the song. It was a pretty daring move, but we’re all glad it happened and worked out.
Taken from the September 2023 issue of Upset. Magnolia Park’s new EPs ‘Soul Eater’ and ‘Moon Eater’ are out 18th August.
