CACrown ArchivesThe cinema collection
Menu
Research dossier · Arts & Letters

Death Magic

album by Health

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
Arts and lettersInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJun 19, 2026
Entity authorityQ20804278
Source-derived summary

Death Magic is the third studio album by American noise rock band Health. It was released by Loma Vista Recordings on August 7, 2015, six years after the band's previous album, Get Color.

Background and recording

After their last main album Get Color in 2009, Health was hired by Rockstar Games to work on the soundtrack for Max Payne 3. During the production of that album, they refined their production style; this combined with lengthy touring and "perfectionist" tendencies lead to a hiatus from non-soundtrack work.

The band intended to make a "modern rock record" driven by sonic experimentation and distinct from their previous work. Inspired by their soundtrack work and their Disco remix albums, they decided to take their next album in a more electronically-influenced direction, being partially inspired by genres such as intelligent dance music and artists such as Burial. However, the prevalence of instrumental passages on Max Payne lead the band to avoid including many in Death Magic.

They initially intended to produce with Rockstar's Woody Jackson, but eventually worked with Andrew Dawson, who had produced albums for Kanye West. Additionally, some tracks were produced by British electronic musician The Haxan Cloak and Lars Stalfors.

Composition

Death Magic features more electronic instrumentation than Health's earlier work.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Death Magic” is album by Health. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Death, Magic and album, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewBest approached as a cultural-object dossier: authorship and date matter, but circulation and reception often explain the wider significance. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—2015, 2009—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 2015. For this dossier, Death, Magic and album is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “album by Health” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q20804278. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2015 and 2009.

Critical limits

Later fame can flatten the distinction between original context, subsequent adaptation and institutional collecting history. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

Best used for
  • Identifying works and editions
  • Tracing reception history
  • Finding collection records
Verify next

The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Death Magic”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Death Magic primary sources, Death Magic archive and Death research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Death Magic”?
  2. Where is authorship, date or provenance documented?
  3. Which edition, object, performance or recording is being described?
Subject index

Search terms from this dossier

Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Death Magic” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.