The Skinny

The musical roots that create the foundation for Prophet Omega begin in Bushwick Brooklyn, New York. From corner to corner the cultural underground of artistic flavors and vibes are the very core of Prophet Omegas music.
"It's like scratchy, raw, bugged out funk from the future. P.O. delivers a somewhat robotic monologue that comes off like beat poetry that has been beat down." -- IGN.com

The search for the right terrain to record the Prophet sound led to a studio tucked away in the Black Head Mountains. "The Ranch" as the residents and local industry folk call it, is steeped with musical history. The likes of George Clinton (Parliament Funkadelic), Sara Lee of the Gang of Four and various celebrities and musicians have inhabited this 65-acre, once famous cowboy Ranch.

Biography

Until recently, Joe Magistro was an affable, unassuming rock drummer who could often be seen manning the traps in the rock clubs of New York City.  Then he underwent a startling metamorphosis into multi-tasking one-man D.I.Y. mastermind Prophet Omega, who makes an appropriately visionary entrance with his Astralwerks debut The Natural World. Recorded in makeshift home studios in a Brooklyn apartment and a rented cabin in the rustic isolation of New York's Catskill mountains, The Natural World is a one-of-a-kind magnum opus whose 13 lovingly crafted tracks combine a freewheeling sonic sensibility with abundant melodic hooks and generous doses of old-school rock and soul beats.  Magistro mines an array of real and sampled instruments and a ramshackle assortment of found sounds, stitching disparate elements into seamlessly funky epics that combine over-the-top sonic inspiration with tightly constructed, lyrically thoughtful songcraft.

Although The Natural World is Prophet Omega's first longplayer, Magistro brings a wealth of musical experience to the project.  In his previous musical life as an in-demand drummer, he was a member of the New York combo Darlahood, which released two albums on Warner Bros, as well as recording and/or performing with an array of artists including Graham Parker, Kate Pierson of the B-52's, Sara Lee, Kevin Salem and Black Crowes member Rich Robinson. 
 
In between drumming gigs, Magistro began assembling instrumental tracks in his modest home studio.  "I'd always played in rock bands, so when I started working with things like loops and crazy found sounds, it was completely new, alien territory for me," he recalls.  "I was really just doing it for my own amusement, but I got up the nerve to play some things for friends, and then people started saying, 'You gotta do a record, you gotta let me play this stuff for some people.'"

When a DJ friend played some of Magistro's homemade tracks at a New York dance club, a member of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy's production team was impressed enough to express interest in using some Prophet Omega tracks on the show.  That led to Magistro contributing the track "An Area Big Enough To Do It In" to the show's star-studded soundtrack album, helping to ignite an instant industry buzz that led to his current Astralwerks deal.

"It was a complete backdoor slacker approach," he says.  "In two months, it had gone from me not wanting anybody to hear this stuff to people offering me record deals.  Then it morphed from me doing these little tracks into writing real songs with lyrics and choruses.  I had never thought of myself as a singer and had never thought about making my own records, but people were digging it, so I kept doing it and getting better at it and becoming more confident with it."

With a record deal in hand, Magistro retreated from the distractions of the city to Unit 2, a small rented cottage located on The Ranch, a farm in the Catskills that was reputedly a party playground for slumming Hollywood movie stars in the 1940s.

"It's definitely a one-guy-with-no-life-holed-up-in-his-home-studio record," Magistro says of The Natural World.  "I really locked myself away and went into my own little world.  I was doing everything myself—writing, playing, recording, setting up the mikes, putting beats down.  I had my computer, keyboards, bells, melodica and various different doodads in one room, and my guitar amps in my bedroom.  I could roll out of bed whenever I wanted, and I could track guitars at midnight and there was no one to complain about the noise. 

"All the beats are programmed, and there are three or four keyboard-sounding moments that are actually chopped-up audio," he explains.  "But everything else is played on real instruments; all the guitars and amps were real guitars and real amps.  The one area where I really used technology was that I used the computer for editing, which meant that I could sketch out an idea for a song with a rough beat and an acoustic guitar, and then cut and paste the track over that." 

Magistro handled all of the album's instruments, vocals and programming himself, except for some guest vocals provided by notable pals Sara Lee (who also plays bass on one track) and Gail Ann Dorsey.  Additional mixing and post-production was done in London with renowned producer Steve Fitzmaurice.

"Working alone was liberating," Magistro notes.  "I'm fine working with other people, but I saved so much time making music alone.  I didn't have to wait for anyone.  It was, 'OK, I'm feeling this, let me put the vocal down.'  I'd get on a roll and just keep going, without the distractions and compromises of working with a bunch of other people." 

While the one-man approach that yielded The Natural World may have offered Joe Magistro some inspirational solitude, the loud buzz accompanying Prophet Omega's emergence suggests that he won't be alone for much longer.

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