INTERVIEW: PLAY TIME’S NEW MAGIC OBJECT IS A PRODUCT OF TIME, SPACE, AND CONNECTION IN THE HUDSON VALLEY
07/08 @ TEMPO Performing Arts Center, Kingston
Provided by Linnéa Gad
“This group foregrounded our relationships as instrumentalists, which was really fun. It felt like I was getting back to something that I understood better when I was younger and just starting to make music”
Play Time, a Hudson Valley-based trio of percussionist Booker Stardrum, saxophonist Will Epstein, and synth player Ben Vida, recently released their debut album, Magic Object, on July 3 via Balmat. The three began gathering to play informally in Vida’s basement after Stardrum and Epstein moved to the area from New York City around 2020.
I spoke with Vida and Epstein ahead of their July 8 show at Tempo Performing Arts Center in Kingston to discuss Magic Object and the community of artists they are finding in the Hudson Valley.
“The group came together very much because we're all in the same area, and with the idea that it just feels so nice to be a group of people in a room together, making music,” Vida tells me. “For all of us, I think it ends up being one of the things that makes it so special.”
Epstein seconds that, elaborating that this kind of collaboration had become increasingly rare in New York City. “I think this casual ‘playing together’ practice had been something that had fallen away a little bit in my daily life in the city. I think I’ve always gravitated towards these kinds of environments where you can create this hearth amidst the quiet,” he says. “There’s a canvas in which to etch on more clearly [here] than in the city. I think that was always appealing to me as well as just the friendly, social aspect of this area.”
Vida furthers Epstein’s thoughts, telling me “There's something about being in this different site that becomes temporally very different. All of a sudden, you can spread out, you can take the afternoon, you can develop something over a longer period of time. It doesn't have that same feeling of compression.
“It’s kind of corny to say, but I think that gets really reflected in the music; you can hear that. You can sense the setting and the headspace that certain kinds of settings allow for.”
The change of pace became key to the recording of Magic Object. The trio recorded in the converted wooden barn studio of Joey Weiss in Rosendale.
“It did not feel pressured at all. Often one of the challenges of working in a professional studio is that you're on the clock and you're paying a good amount of money,” Epstein explains. “With this, he was just excited to have us there breaking in his space and we were excited to be there and get our nascent band recorded.”
The trio played together with no headphones in one room, just as they had during basement jams and early performances at Tubby’s in Kingston.
“I think we got into some mellower spaces that maybe we hadn't totally explored yet, but felt natural in the setting,” Epstein says.
Vida continues, “We were doing these epically long days too, not because we felt like we needed to get the most out of our time, but we were just enjoying being in there, playing and discovering it together.
“The material that surprised us the most was some of the tracks that came out at the end of those long days, when it felt like we had run through so many ideas. All of a sudden, this other space opens up and this feeling of consistency starts to drop away, and you're just living in it. It’s not about making something happen; things are happening because that's how you're living.”
As this is the first project they’ve ever recorded together, Vida remarks, “The recording is very much a documentation of us discovering what we are as a group.”
One track they are eager to revisit live is the album’s title track, “Magic Object.” The track, which they describe as a bit of an outlier, features a six-foot tall contrabass.
“It was an especially unexpected moment in the studio, and it's one that we haven't tried to play in front of an audience,” Vida says. “We’ll see if it’s possible to recreate or if that was just the magic of that particular moment.”
For the launch, the band plans to set up to play in the audience or somewhere off the stage at TEMPO like they often did at their early performances at Tubby’s to break down barriers between performers and listeners.
“There's a casualness that promotes, so that everyone feels invited and everyone can come in and get into a relaxed place with us,” Vida says.
Friend of the band, guitarist and psychoanalyst, Ezra Feinberg will also play with a band of many local musicians as well.
Play Time has been an outlet for the band members to experiment with other styles of music like minimalism and hypnotic groove that they have not yet had opportunities to try out in their other projects.
“This group foregrounded our relationships as instrumentalists, which was really fun. It felt like I was getting back to something that I understood better when I was younger and just starting to make music,” Vida says. “We’re improvising, but we’re not letting go of melody or rhythm. We can embrace what we love about so many different kinds of music, and that all fits into this vessel.”
For the band, moving upstate changed their creative process as well as their mentality about their music.
“I've always really enjoyed getting into long-form minimalistic compositions, but there's something interesting about actually being in a space that invites that kind of practice. Now, getting into that sort of long-form composition space doesn't feel as much like a discipline as it does a reaction or an actual communing with the surroundings,” Vida says.
Epstein continues, “To me, the process is related to the sound in a very direct way. I've gotten much more into wanting to record in a very live way. Wanting to play all in the same room, without headphones, and just play music,” he explains. “I got tired of being too finicky on the computer. I think maybe the impulse of that is not dissimilar from wanting to be more in a natural setting.”
They discussed the importance of getting back to jamming or “relating in a spontaneous way” as Epstein said jokingly.
“I think it's actually more about the people involved, to be honest. I think the setting up here is a filter,” Vida explains. “We're three people who chose to leave the city and spend our day-to-day up here. I think it's that sensibility more than actually being in the woods.”
Epstein continues, “It’s about community and the social aspect and how that bleeds into a desire for this type of process. I think that really does inform the sound. Music is about people as much as anything else.”
The trio will celebrate the album release with a performance at TEMPO Performing Arts Center in Kingston on July 8. TEMPO opened its doors in February 2026 and it is located in the historical Trinity Methodist Church in the Rondout area in Kingston. The venue includes performance spaces, classrooms, recording studios and a full commercial kitchen. It’s a place where artists can write, record, perform and host events all under one roof.
Play time performs July 8 at TEMPO Performing Arts Center in Kingston. For more information and tickets visit: https://www.viewcy.com/event/play_time__magic_obj
Stream Magic Object here: https://balmat.bandcamp.com/album/magic-object