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...Magnet

Buy this album now!

'On Your Side'
Ultimate Dilemma/East West Records
OUT 7th July 2003

Even Johansen aka Magnet follows his spine chilling and widely acclaimed series of EPs with 'On Your Side', with his highly anticipated debut album.

Recorded over the past year, mainly in his tranquil pigeon loft studio
abode, near Lockerbie in the wilderness of southern Scotland, 'On Your Side' is a beautiful and bold statement of intent. Powerful, dark, individual, creative - everything you would expect from a great debut album.

Johansen has been likened to many classic and contemporary artists from Thom Yorke to The Sugarcubes via Glenn Campbell and Air, but 'On Your Side' will establish his own identity as a purveyor of sinister yet achingly powerful lullabies, blissful sweet relief and melodious wonderment. His preceding EPs 'Where Happiness Lives', 'Chasing Dreams' and 'The Day We Left Town' gave people the first warm welcome to the world of Magnet. All received critical support across the media and radio spectrum, from the likes of The Blue Room, Xfm and Mark & Lard. The first's title track was recently selected in the Sunday Times Top 20 tracks of 2002.

Magnet spent much of last year playing several triumphant headline shows across the UK and Norway alongside dates as special guests to Doves, Gemma Hayes and Ed Harcourt. Gemma in turn makes an appearance on one of the album's standout tracks, a duet of Bob Dylan's 'Lay Lady Lay', where their voices intertwine in perfect unison. For four minutes, the world stops and happiness exudes from their collective lips. Elsewhere string arrangements on the album come courtesy of Sean O'Hagan (High Lamas).

As for the album: 'The Day We Left Town' is soaring, anthemic and
mind-blowing. A fantastical cross between David Lynch's 'Lost Highway' and shaded 50's black'n'white movies played out on lap steel. 'My Darling Curse' and the deliciously strung out 'Overjoyed' offer yet more twisted insight into the whispered, wonderful world of Magnet, where despair flirts with elation over crashing drum beats, grand brass pomp and overwhelming melancholic ambience.

Then from the building joy of 'Last Day Of Summer', to the swing and
glorious kiss of 'Everything's Perfect', where Magnet offers the eternal
question, "...You say you'd die for me, but why can't you live for me", to the album's finale of 'Smile To The World', a last crackling waltz before normality resumes, 'On Your Side' is an album that mirrors life itself, moodswings, darkness, light and a fundamental understanding of human emotion. Sometimes its good to know that all yellow roads don't lead back to Kansas.

Confirmed support gigs for Bebel Gilberto

19th JULY at Manchester Bridgewater Hall
22nd JULY at London Shepherds Bush Empire
30th JULY at Bristol Academy

Media Reviews

"Scando-pop at its most beautifully despondent and despondently beautiful, conjuring long nights by the fire, nursing a glass and a shattered heart."
THE SUNDAY TIMES

"Johansen writes ace songs which he sings like Thom Yorke trapped in a David Lynch film."
THE GUARDIAN

"An exquisite, haunting lullaby that sounds like a valedictory glance back at the end of the world, but in fact hints at something so much more. A record to lose your heart to."
JOCKEYSLUT

"A gorgeous soaring, ethereal slice of cerebral stream. It's electronic
country for the Jeff Buckley generation."
TIME OUT

"Vulnerable soul sighs, soft nights under uncertain stars, all floating in
space and reflecting light like the dust off angel wings."
I-D

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