Led by mysterious and somewhat anonymous music producer and comic illustrator Shay Plummer, Magic Sword is a Boise, ID-based multimedia project that employs the use of music and comics to tell the mythical story of the Magic Sword, a weapon of infinite power, left to be guarded by an enigmatic character simply named The Keeper. And in the world that Plummer and company have created, The Keeper bursts out from his comic world to bring together the disciples of the Magic Sword together for a cinematic and energetic live experience.
With the release of their debut single, followed up by their full-length debut, which also featured a comic created by Plummer in 2012, the masked producer and his equally masked cohorts quickly received attention across both Idaho and the Rocky Mountain region. Over the next 18 months, the project played sold out shows at some of Boise’s biggest and most renowned clubs, shared bills with Odesza and Slow Magic and played at 2013’s Treefort Music Fest. Following a series of street-level guerrilla concerts in Portland, and four tracks appearing in GoPro’s Streets of Japan documentary, the act began to receive international attention, which also lead to their participation in the Hotline Miami 2 video game soundtrack, as well as the re-release of Volume One through renowned indie label Tender Loving Empire.
Earlier this year, the masked producer and his masked collaborators partnered with Steve Angello’s Size Records for Volume One‘s follow up, a series of episodic EPs, which are accompanied by a comic that tells another chapter in the story of The Keeper with the first of the EPs, Legend was released earlier this year and the second of the series will be released later this year. The act recently appeared on GoPro’s Done In One series, and not only does it give you a great sense of the act’s incredibly dramatic live set, it also gives you a good sense of why the act has started to receive the attention they have — their sound manages to bear a resemblance to John Carpenter’s futuristic soundtrack and to French electronic act Chateau Marmont, as their sound possesses a cinematic quality; in fact, it sounds as though it should be part of a post-apocalyptic/retro-futuristic thriller.
The act will be embarking on a US tour over the fall that will include an October 8, 2016 stop at the Knitting Factory. Check out the tour dates below.
TOUR DATES
9.8 Spokane, WA Big Dipper
9.9. Moscow, ID University of Idaho (SUB Ballroom)
9.10 Missoula, MT Plus One Fest (The Badlander)
9.23 Boise, ID Knitting Factory
9.28 Idaho Falls, ID The Sickhouse
9.29 Billings, MT Pub Station
9.30 Denver, CO Hi-Dive
10. 1 Kansas City, MO Outer Reaches Fest (recordBar)
10. 3 Lincoln, NE Vega
10. 4 Madison, WI The Frequency
10. 5 Chicago, IL Subterranean
10. 8 Brooklyn, NY Knitting Factory
10. 11 Nashville, TN The Basement East
10.13 Fayetteville, AR Smoke and Barrel
10.15 Austin, TX Empire
10.19 Phoenix, AZ Valley Bar
10.20 San Diego, CA Soda Bar
10.22 Glendale, CA Complex
10.23 San Francisco, CA Make-Out Room
10.26 Seattle, WA Chop Suey
10.27 Portland, OR Daze of the Dead Fest
