Magna Carda’s Exclusive Album Experience At Equipment Room

The Details:

Where: Equipment Room, Austin
When: Wednesday, March 12, 10:00 PM
Tickets: Limited capacity – RSVP required

What To Expect: “WITH THE BAND: Magna Carda” is an album release party for Magna Carda, one of “Austin’s most lauded hip-hop groups.” The event, which takes place at upscale vinyl bar Equipment Room at Music Lane on South Congress, will feature a full-playback session of the new album and a discussion with Megz Kelli and Dougie Do from Magna Carda.

Meet Magna Carda:

• Austin Monthly’s Bryan C. Parker describes the duo as possessing “an effortless chemistry.” He continues: “Megz’s bars rumble with even cadences and land with powerful punches while Dougie’s jazz influenced beats flow through twinkling piano and thumping bass, possessing the instrumental warmth of old-school hip-hop groups like Digable Planets and the atmospheric synths of modern R&B artists like Solange or Arlo Parks.”
  

• Here’s how Ryan Ellis from Texas Highway describes the duo’s “absolute nonconformity to genre,” calling their last record “staggering” and “disruptive in the best way possible, featuring moments of xylophone, blues guitar, trumpet, and IDM beats. Sometimes all at once.”
  

Here’s a YouTube recording of Magna Carda performing “The Root” live at KUTX studios in Austin. The song is one of the duo’s most popular, has also secured over 1.5 million listens on Spotify.

Setting The Scene: Equipment Room made “Bon Appetit’s Best New Bars in America” list, and Conde Nast Traveler called it the perfect spot “for a low-key, audio-lovers evening.” As Mandy Ellis and Jenna Scatena describe in a list of the 17 best bars in Austin, “Equipment Room’s hand-selected 1,200+ blues, jazz, and soul vinyls tell the origin story of Austin and Texas sound while dabbling in 1950s Japanese Jazz Kissa culture.” Meanswhile, its “soundproof entrance, illuminated by a jewel-toned stained glass window, accompanied by a matte black ceiling lined with recording studio-quality acoustic foam sets the tone for visiting audiophiles drooling over custom vintage hi-fi equipment.”

Related: “Newbies,” a new film co-directed by Magna Carda’s Megz Kelli, is premiering at SXSW in the Texas Short Competition. Catch a screening of the new film at Rollins Theatre at The Long Center. This isn’t Megz’s first film. She “wrote, directed, and scored” Little Trumpet in 2022, “a 7th Ward coming-of-age story” set in New Orleans (where she was born and raised). That film won “jury awards for Best Narrative Short (Bushwick Film Festival), Best Cinematography (Tacoma Film Festival), Best Louisiana Short (New Orleans Film Festival), and Best African-American Directed Short (Phoenix Film Festival).”

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