Play Time – Magic Object
We sometimes forget how integral a studio setting can be in developing an artist or album’s unique sound. It takes certain talent and skill to deliver the notes you want; the production environments capturing them, and the producers, engineers, and other musicians arranging and manipulating them work at their best as additional band members formed like Voltron. The experiments on Play Time’s new LP Magic Object belie their existence as a trio—music that’s relatively easy on the ears that nevertheless conjures an illusion of being made by at least a few more hard-working performers in the room.
Percussionist Booker Stardrum (SML, Weyes Blood) and saxophonist Will Epstein (Nicolás Jaar, Darkside) had each separately moved to New York’s Hudson Valley and stumbled upon their neighbor, synth player Ben Vida. Jams with them at his house soon turned into a sort of bar-band residency at Tubby’s in Kingston, New York. Realizing it was becoming something more than their own individual boutique projects or long-standing work within other bands, they gave it the Play Time name. They debut on Magic Object with a set of music that oscillates between spiritual jazz and sounds spun out from the Krautrock universe.
Play Time’s formula sounds exceedingly simple on paper—Epstein’s brass becomes the focal point above a Vida-Stardrum rhythm section—but the execution on Magic Object is quietly sublime. They honed songs’ basic structures in studio sessions before adding overdubs, it seems mostly from Epstein. The extra work often gives listeners the impression of interplay involving and among multiple horns. In “22° Halo” this comes across as contemplative bleating from different parts of a room; in “Open the Door, Joey,” it transforms an Epstein staccato from just part of a motorik groove to part of a two-sided conversation. They negotiate with Vida’s keyboards, mimic clouds of buzzing insects, even slowly rotate as religious mantras might
There’s some legitimate experimental funk to be heard in tracks like “Public Broadcast,” but there are also soft, peaceful moments on here that lift not just from jazz but from ambient electronics. The title track seems to not have any of its primary instruments present, not even Stardrum handling a full kit. “Float All Bones,” meanwhile, is one of a few instances where Play Time imagine new age soundtracks for nature footage, the music of lazy rivers and rarely-seen jungle creatures. Alongside Epstein’s manipulated saxophone unisons and harmonies, these all strengthen the immediate present of Magic Object and suggest great things for the trio’s future.
Label: Balmat
Year: 2026
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