We featured a video and quick Q&A from Apocalypse l8er in April (2021) when they put about the first album Street Magic. It was great to great to get a chance to talk to the duet of Marshall Quist & Curran Birdwell in real time via Zoom about the newest release, Street Illusions.
Marshall and Curran are musicians and producers. They do very interesting things with the music. It’s often a mix of more traditional instruments with soundscapes and layering and stripping of different sounds. Street Magic and Street Illusions are like a two-record set. The second album includes remixes and/or reiterations of the songs from the first album. It’s fun to hear how different or nuanced a song can feel with different tweak or entirely new approach. My favorite transition is Prepaid (on Street Magic) morphing into Prepaid and Pretuned (on Street Illusions). The song feels more traditional on the second go around; I love how different it sounds.
The pandemic definitely jump started Apocalypse l8er’s first album. They had been working on it; in fact they have been playing music since high school but at some point Street Magic was put on a shelf and suddenly become easier to reach when the world shut down. It’s one of those COVID silver linings. We’re happy to see that the work keeps going. Not only have they released two albums in 2021, they are working on new music, which sounds like it might be a little noisier. Can’t wait to hear it!
Mostly Minnesota 