According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, a magician is someone “...who practices magic, sometimes considered the same as a sorcerer or witch (...). The name derives from the magus, an ancient Persian priest, and the cognate maghdim, a Chaldean term meaning wisdom and philosophy”. While Wikipedia describes Magic as “...an ancient practice rooted in rituals, spiritual divinations, and/or cultural lineage—with an intention to invoke, manipulate, or otherwise manifest supernatural forces, beings, or entities in the natural world.”
The figure of the magician has manifested in many forms in modern music. To cite an iconic example, Screamin' Jay Hawkins' 1956 song "I Put a Spell On You" was one of the first tracks to directly and explicitly use the figure of the magician, leading to boycotts by radio stations and record stores due to its references to voodoo and black magic. His stage performance left no doubt about the dark nature of the song and the central, macabre role that the magician figure plays in this work.
Screamin Jay Hawkins - I put a spell on you
Moving into more recent popular music, examples abound. Both in Heavy Metal and Pop music, there are numerous references to magicians or stage performances that evoke this figure. Tracks like “The Wizard” by Black Sabbath, “Stargazer” by Rainbow, and “Mr. Crowley” by Ozzy Osbourne are classics that kick off an endless stream of metal songs related to magic and the occult.
OZZY OSBOURNE - "Mr. Crowley" 1981 (Live Video)
On the pop side, we have tracks like “Rasputin” by Boney M. or “Abracadabra” by Steve Miller Band, which approach magic or the legendary figure of the mystic Rasputin in a more playful way. Here, magic is presented more metaphorically, used to embellish the more mundane topics typically addressed by popular music.
Steve Miller Band - Abracadabra (Official Music Video)
So, when does the figure of the magician begin to appear in electronic music? From the references to the macabre and the occult in industrial and darkwave music, we can trace roots in this topic. The band Psychic TV, historically connected both to Throbbing Gristle and the emerging Acid House scene, has several tracks that reference the occult and magic, offering good examples of the electronic music trend to swiftly move away from the pristine and idealized hypermodern imagery proposed by Kraftwerk, into more arcane realms.
Hex Sex
In this 1980s context, where both Synthpop and more extreme forms of electronic music like EBM embraced darker and more nocturnal aesthetics, New Beat emerged—a genre commonly recognized as the direct ancestor of Hardcore Techno in the late '80s.
It’s within this style that we begin to see early signs of the magician figure in Hardcore, which would project into the future. An iconic example is the stage performance of the classic track “Hysteria” by the New Beat group Amnesia. In this performance, the frontman appears dressed as a magician, wearing a top hat, white gloves, and a colorful outfit. Here, we see the magician as a showman, distinct from the figure of a "real" magician—fiction is implied. This aligns with the more festive spirit of New Beat, which was more functional, geared towards clubs and raves, where the magician acts as the master of ceremonies in a grand spectacle filled with strange sounds, pyrotechnics, and psychedelia.
Amnesia - Hysteria - 1988 - [7" Mix] - (Original Music Video) - Belgian New Beat/Acid
As Simon Reynolds points out in his classic tome on Rave culture, Hardcore electronic music in its broadest sense presents clear parallels between its sonic formulas and magical formulas:
“The parallels between sampladelia and magic have not been lost on its exponents. With his contraptions and arcane, self-invented terminology, the hardcore producer lies somewhere between the mad scientist and the sorcerer with his potions, alembics and spells. (…) The DJ too is often regarded as a shaman or dark magus.”
While Reynolds refers to this in the context of the production techniques and mystique of artists like Goldie during the transition period between Breakbeat Hardcore and Jungle, known as Darkcore or Darkside Hardcore, what he points out is applicable to the entirety of these electronic music styles and beyond. In fact, there are many other instances within Hardcore that highlight this association.
Another interesting case can be seen in classics from the so-called "Belgian Techno" or "Techno-Rave" during its peak between 1991 and 1992. For example, the artwork for the classic track "Le Seigneur de Tenebres" features a magician in the sense of a true sorcerer, dressed in an outfit reminiscent of a druid with a long white beard and flowing hair, akin to Merlin working with dark powers. A black-caped wizard can also be seen in the music video for the same track.
Pleasure Game - Le Seigneur Des Ténèbres (Official Video)
A similar figure, also in the vein of Merlin, is observed in the track “Heute Nacht Ist Myrdin's Nacht” by Myrdin from 1991. Here, we see a sorcerer with a more caricatured appearance, yet still interacting with chaotic forces, symbolized by arrows in the shape of saw blades pointing in various directions, akin to the traditional symbol of chaos.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRrUaXTRhpw
Within the same Techno-Rave style currents at the dawn of Hardcore, we have the iconic band Messiah with their classic;music video for the track “Temple of Dreams.” The video features three characters: a magician, a singer in a metallic dress, and a dark hooded figure with a gas mask. The magician transports us to a hidden dimension where everything moves, colors constantly shift, and strange shapes swirl around, while the intensity of the music fills the space. The video evokes the Rave experience, where ravers of the time entered a parallel world to escape the constraints of a static reality.
This trinity of mysterious entities give the impression of strange messengers delivering a wicked experience to the audience, brought from another dimension—reminiscent of the Cenobites in the Hellraiser franchise, which has been very influential in Hardcore Techno culture since its inception. The Messiah makes the audience eyewitnesses of whatever this strange crew has to offer. The magician here is also the white rabbit, a messenger and deliverer of this new world after we, as Alice, have fallen into the rabbit hole.
Messiah - Temple Of Dreams (Official Video)
As Hardcore evolved into its more definitive form, the figure of the magician has appeared in countless artist names, tracks, and release artwork. For now, let’s focus on one of its most iconic symbols: the classic Wizard logo from Thunderdome. Considering everything reviewed so far, we can see that it is more than just an idea from ID&T; it is the result of a long development within music in general and particularly within the immediate predecessors of Gabber, such as New Beat and Rave.
However, this Wizard figure still has its particularities. It aligns more clearly with the image of a real sorcerer rather than a show magician, resembling the druidic form seen in the artwork of Pleasure Game. Both arms raised also seem to respond to the classic figure of the magician in tarot. While in the latter, one arm is raised to the sky and the other extends towards the earth, expressing the motto “as above, so below” and symbolizing the channeling of otherworldly energies into the mundane, the Thunderdome Wizard raises both arms, demonstrating strength and a greater focus on channeling otherworldly energies, as well as the escapism from the mundane seen in more Rave-oriented genres like old-school Gabber.
A quote from the 1992 film "The Lawnmower Man" summarizes quite well how Hardcore has adopted and adapted the figure of the magician:
"Nothing we've been doing is new. We haven't been tapping into new areas of the brain - we've just been awakening the ancient. This technology is simply a mirror of the powers that wizards and alchemists possessed centuries ago. The human race has lost that knowledge and now *We* are reclaiming it."
In fact, this quote appears in the track “New Areas Of The Brain - The Middle Chill” by TCM, in the mix “House Party 10 (The Hardcore Mix)” released by Arcade:
House party 10: The hardcore mix (full)
Thus, we see how, on many levels, the figure of the magician is not something new in music, nor in Hardcore. It is a universal archetype that constantly emerges, and it has been present in Hardcore since its early days in the genres that began to lay its foundations. It has solidified as an icon that, while not always as evident as in other musical genres, is very relevant for understanding the mystical potential of Hardcore.
You might also be interested to read this Exclusive Feature: The Occult Underground Beneath the Hardcore Techno Scene Exposed
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