MAKIN' WEIRDLY GOOD MAGIC HAPPEN INTERVIEW BY KRYSTI JOMÉI PHOTOS + ART BY DAN HARTMAN & CHARLES INGRAM Part band. Part film producers. Part SNL level comedy sketch artists. Part existential therapists. Part … magicians? The impliers aren’t just a psych-dream pop-electro duo. Or even a comedy act. They’re a fully selftaught, self-produced multimedia entity and concept band who create expert level visual and sonic content and deeply meaningful work, all through the lens of not taking life so seriously. Born creatives, Denver-based Dan Hartman and North Carolina-based Charles Ingram unite as the impliers not for accolades or stardom or even just to jam — but because they have no choice but to make art. Sure, it’s a nice side effect that they’ve won multiple awards for their music and videos alongside brands such as Netflix, HBO and PBS, and organizations like the Denver 48 Hour Film Festival. And that their 2022 debut album, Cocoon, received high praise and worldwide traction for their following. But in the grand scheme, Dan and Charles are just trying to use their innate artistic gifts to talk about things that people experience but don’t usually admit or say out loud, in hopes of creating a safe space for all who need it to explore the scope of our feelings in the world we live in together, and ultimately to spread some light. I had the chance to catch up with the pair to talk about their 3-part upcoming release, The Magic, and to dive a little deeper into the magic tricks they have up their sleeves, but are willing to share, that make the experience of being human on this planet a little bit more fun. You both met at the ripe age of 15 in North Carolina. Now you’re in a full-blown project together with several awards and impressive experiences like having music released on compilations alongside Fugazi, Of Montreal and Jawbreaker. How did the concept of the impliers come about? Dan: We came up in this active and energetic punk/metal scene in NC and were the only band playing spaced out indie music and the scene really embraced it. We’d regularly play with JRS (Tony from Municipal Waste) and The Kickass (Bennie from Valient Thorr) at a skatepark that No. 132 regularly packed crowds of 100+ kids — Future Islands started there. We felt on the cusp of something special, but in that teenage phase we had plenty of distractions and stopped playing live altogether. We still independently made things, collecting enough equipment to build these small home studios and for the next few decades, we each did solo music for our own enjoyment and banked tons of unreleased music. We never lost sight of the spark when the two of us collaborated, and we continued to send one another music and got together to film weird sketch comedy. I always had ambitions to start doing things more purposefully, and one day in 2019, I texted Charles, “You and I have a new band. The name of the band is ‘the impliers.’” And he said, “Okay. It’s good to have the name out of the way,” and we started putting together the songs that made our first album, Cocoon. The impliers initially comes off as pure comedy gold and tongue-in-cheek musical performance. But upon scratching the surface there’s a serious undertone and compassionate depth to your work. Your 2022 debut, Cocoon, spotlighted fundamental issues spanning from mental health conditions to relationship complexities to mortality salience to a scope of existential questions. Comedy often serves as a safe space and vehicle to communicate vital and hard life topics. But how do you balance the two in order to successfully get your points across and also make the art you want to make? Dan: That’s a really good question. We each grew up as the class clowns in our friend group making people laugh (and mostly still are). As we got older, our collaboration turned exclusively toward sketch comedy, really just to make our families and friends crack up. There’s a healing element in comedy, we have so much fun with the whole process … we laugh the entire time coming up with an idea, writing it, filming it, and the whole way we’re just losing it. People’s outer shells are usually lighter than their inside personalities, but we tend to display our insides a lot
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