A drum by itself and a sample by itself don’t really sound as good as a drum and a sample together. I like to think of it like Darth Vader – half man/half machine – because the drums sounds and the technology have just come so far. We’ve always been all about combining – I like electronic with organic, and we lie somewhere between those two. I noticed that you’ve got significant sampling on Smoke + Mirrors. You just started talking about experimentation. I have to stop using my ears for a little bit, so being able to break like that, I think, helped us a lot. We really tried to treat it like a nine-to-five job as much as possible, which also helps because if you’re working on the same piece of music for longer than five or six hours, I mean… I lose perspective on what anything sounds like after that. Renting studio time is extremely expensive and we only had so many days, so the attitude was kind of like, “We need to get absolute efficiency out of each day in the studio.” We would end up working 18-20 hour days sometimes and kind of losing our minds by the end of the process, whereas this time around we had the opportunity to really try to set some healthy work schedules. Not to say – I mean we’re extremely proud of Night Visions, it’s just we’re a young band and we didn’t have very much money. We for sure had the luxury this time around of being able to spend a little more time on all the bells and whistles, really making sure everything was the way we wanted it exactly. Recording a whole record in your own studio gives it cohesion as well, and shapes a uniform sound of sorts.ĭid you find that you took a lot more time recording and producing each song, getting everything precise down to the note? This time around we also had our own studio, whereas we recorded elsewhere for the first one. We had to decide what were our very favorite songs and what kind of an album we were trying to make, and we took a long time with that. All throughout the touring we were writing… So we entered the studio with – and I’m not even exaggerating – over 150 demos that we had to go through and try to select what would create the most cohesive album. After Night Visions, we were pretty much touring all the time, so we started writing immediately. It took a bunch of EPs before we felt comfortable doing that. We as a band took our time making our debut record because you only have one chance to make a debut – a first impression. You guys released a slew of EPs before Night Visions, and Night Visions ended up as a partial compilation of those previous EPs, whereas Smoke + Mirrors comes from a more cohesive timeframe. Smoke + Mirrors certainly shows a musical maturity of the band from your debut. Smoke + Mirrors displays Imagine Dragons’ growth while offering a collection of beautifully intricate, expressive and powerful songs, but like the title track asks, is it just smoke and mirrors? To find out, Atwood Magazine sat down with Imagine Dragons’ Daniel Platzman for an exclusive one-on-one interview.
![imagine dragons album smoke mirrors imagine dragons album smoke mirrors](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/imaginedragons/images/1/15/It_Comes_Back_To_You.jpg)
The album provides an opportunity to look behind the curtain at the fragile and duplicitous nature of success. That is not to say this album is bereft of joy and celebration – in fact, several tracks like “It Comes Back To You,” “Summer” and the album’s hit single “ I Bet My Life” are cheerful and positive – but as a whole, the songs on Smoke + Mirrors reflect greater depths of human emotion and an internal struggle between confidence and uncertainty.
![imagine dragons album smoke mirrors imagine dragons album smoke mirrors](https://http2.mlstatic.com/smoke-mirrors-imagine-dragons-disco-cd-18-canciones-D_NQ_NP_851968-MLM29453631755_022019-F.jpg)
It is a musically and lyrically intense album: As discussed in Atwood Magazine’s Smoke + Mirrors preview last month, Smoke + Mirrors‘ most striking features are the explosiveness, heaviness and darkness that permeate its songs, leaving the listener with a sense of excitement, wonder and, for the deeper, more attentive listeners, introspection and disillusionment.
![imagine dragons album smoke mirrors imagine dragons album smoke mirrors](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/bf/68/f4/bf68f4fd3009bd16143199b3f5ec6dda.png)
Smoke + Mirrors’ thirteen carefully-crafted songs are the product of over 150 demos written on the road during the past two years, the bulk of which has seen Imagine Dragons (aka Dan Reynolds, Daniel Platzman, Wayne “Wing” Sermon and Ben McKee) extensively touring the globe in a near-constant spotlight. Cohesive yet unique in both style and approach, Smoke + Mirrors is Imagine Dragons’ finest work to date! A nonstop whirlwind of “high highs” and “low lows” is enhanced with creative and adventurous production that defies expectations while remaining characteristically Imagine Dragons-esque. The followup to their 2012 smash hit Night Visions, Smoke + Mirrors finds Imagine Dragons boldly developing their sound through the same kind of musical exploration, lyrical depth and sonic experimentation that made their debut album an international success. American rock band Imagine Dragons released their highly anticipated sophomore album Smoke + Mirrors this week.