''Dead Magic'' is the fourth studio album by Swedish musician Anna von Hausswolff. It was released on 2 March 2018 on

City Slang City Slang is an independent record label based in Berlin, Germany. History The label was founded in 1990 by former tour agent Christof Ellinghaus, exclusively to release The Flaming Lips' '' In A Priest Driven Ambulance (With Silver Sunshine ...

and received critical acclaim.

Background and recording

The album was written by Hausswolff during the summer of 2016, in her hometown of Gothenburg and then the majority of it was recorded the following year at

Frederik's Church Frederik's Church ( da, Frederiks Kirke), popularly known as The Marble Church () for its rococo architecture, is an Evangelical Lutheran church in Copenhagen, Denmark. The church forms the focal point of the Frederiksstaden district; it is loca ...

located in

Copenhagen Copenhagen ( or .; da, København ) is the capital and most populous city of Denmark, with a proper population of around 815.000 in the last quarter of 2022; and some 1.370,000 in the urban area; and the wider Copenhagen metropolitan ar ...

, Denmark.

Reception

Upon release, ''Dead Magic'' received critical acclaim. At

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created by Jason Dietz, Marc ...

, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 reviews from mainstream critics, the album has an average score of 81, indicating "universal acclaim".

Track listing

Personnel

;Musicians *Anna von Hausswolff – vocals,

pipe organ The pipe organ is a musical instrument that produces sound by driving pressurized air (called ''wind'') through the organ pipes selected from a keyboard. Because each pipe produces a single pitch, the pipes are provided in sets called ''rank ...

Mellotron The Mellotron is an electro-mechanical musical instrument developed in Birmingham, England, in 1963. It is played by pressing its keys, each of which pushes a length of magnetic tape against a capstan, which pulls it across a playback head. ...

*Filip Leyman – synthesizer *Karl Vento – guitar *Joel Fabiansson – guitar *David Sabel – bass guitar *Ulrik Ording – drums *

Shahzad Ismaily Secret Chiefs 3 (or SC3) is an American avant-garde group led by guitarist/composer Trey Spruance (of Mr. Bungle and formerly, Faith No More). Their studio recordings and tours have featured different lineups, as the group performs a wide ran ...

– percussion *Úlfur Hansson – string arrangements *Gyda Valtysdottir – strings *Randall Dunn – Mellotron,

Korg MS-20 The Korg MS-20 is a patchable semi-modular monophonic analog synthesizer which Korg released in 1978 and which was in production until 1983. It was part of Korg's MS series of instruments, which also included the single oscillator MS-10, the ke ...

, sound designer ;Production *Randall Dunn – production, mixing *Jason Ward – mastering ;Design *Anna von Hausswolff – design, layout, inner sleeve drawing *Magnus Andersson – layout *Maria von Hausswolff – cover photograph

Charts

References

2018 albums Anna von Hausswolff albums City Slang albums Albums produced by Randall Dunn Experimental rock albums by Swedish artists Heavy metal albums by Swedish artists Dark wave albums {{2010s-metal-album-stub