They explored the hidden lives of classic horror movie stars on 2020’s Masters Of Illusion and now Magenta have turned to cunning folk to conjure up their first orchestral album, The White Witch – ASymphonic Trilogy. Robert Reed and Christina Booth talk to Prog about old horror flicks, medieval healers and dreams of the Royal Albert Hall.

Words: David West Images: Andrew Alan and Aga Tomaszek

“It would be nice to do the Royal Albert Hall. There might only be about 100 people in there, but it would still be nice to do something there. You never know.”

Christine Booth

Forget eye of newt, toe of frog, wing of bat and tongue of dog, the magic ingredients in The White Witch – ASymphonic Trilogy were nagging and a restless hankering for something new. With their ninth studio record, Magenta have embraced the symphonic, crafting an album with an orchestra assembled from instruments both real and sampled to tell the story of witches through the ages.

“I always get bored doing the same thing over and over again, really, so I wanted to try something a little different,” says Robert Reed, who wrote the music that’s accompanied by lyrics from his brother Steven. The album is split into three chapters: Sacrifice, Retribution and Survival, and the concept behind the record emerged when Reed went back to Magenta’s 2001 debut, Revolutions. “There was a track on it called The White Witch, a 20-minute epic, and one day in the studio I thought: ‘What about going back and remixing the first album, to learn from your mistakes and revamp it?’ I went back and all the files were on old technology, so I couldn’t do it. I started messing around with this track. I had the vocal to work with from the original take and I started constructing an orchestral arrangement around it and got really excited. I thought: This could work.”