Intern’s Corner
Magdalena Bay is an indie/art pop duo hailing from Los Angeles, known for their dreamy soundscapes and catchy melodies. Composed of Mica Tenenbaum and Matt Lutz, the pair blends nostalgic pop influences with modern and experimental production techniques, creating a unique sonic identity.
Matt centers his contribution to the duo around production and instrumentation, rarely diving into some background vocals. Mica handles the vocals in a way that separates Magdalena Bay from other pop artists and groups that are out right now. Her tonality and style of singing is futuristic and transportative which pairs perfectly with Matt’s style of production, especially for this new album.
Imaginal Disk is one of the most creative pop albums in recent memory. It captures the feeling of a dystopian utopia through the atmosphere curated. The influences for this album are baked perfectly into the mixes without becoming obvious or distracting at all.
Imaginal Disk explores every crevice of the creative confines it creates for itself in this concept album, and is unpredictable the whole time. You feel like you are listening to the future of pop, appreciating its influences, and finding unexplored areas of pop all in one project.
The album opens up with the industrial, fuzzy feeling track “She Looked Like Me!” and the synth-pop banger “Killing Time” before transitioning into the meat of the album with “True Blue Interlude.”
The first three tracks provide all the convincing the listener would need to assume that this album would at least be an enjoyable listen, followed by “Image,” one of the masterpieces on the album. Not only a song that avoids conventionality, but that should be astronomically larger than it currently is.
“Image” has an alluring synth pop instrumental mixed with some house style drums that you might hear in the movie Blade before the beast drops and the blood turns the club-goers into vampires. If you can avoid gyrating and moving your body when the chorus gets introduced, then you should consider yourself a stronger person than most.
The song culminates in an epic climax, with the combination of all of the elements of the song, the chorus, and an added filthy bassline that shakes speakers, and is absolutely irresistible. Do not be surprised when this song is high on my top songs of 2024 article later this year. There’s so much to say about this song, I will leave it at “irresistible” for now.
What is amazing about this album is that it does not falter after this song, and the rest of the album is not even remotely outshone by “Image.” “Death & Romance,” “Fear, Sex,” and “Vampire in the Corner” are the next three songs, and become more personal along with taking more creative risks.
They remain within this utopian pop-scape that has been created, while making the mixing a bit more darker to fit the aesthetic of these songs. The themes expose more about Magdalena Bay than has been shown before, while simultaneously making you feel like you are sitting by the last tree in Blade Runner 2049.
“Love is Everywhere” is another high point on this album. Magdalena Bay pulls influence from Tom Tom Club in this song while interpolating Lil Yachty’s “running out of time” while changing the lyrics in the chorus to “love is everywhere.” It is hypnotizing, harmonic, and makes this combination of influences its own.
“That’s My Floor” could be another radio hit on this album. Mica effortlessly sings an earworm of a chorus on this song which has a futuristic, funky instrumental that Christina Agulera would have killed for. This song has the base of a hit pop song, while building on it in an unexpected way, which is the connecting theme of this album.
The common thread of Imaginal Disk is risk taking that pays off. Magdalena Bay creates this world that the listener can live in, containing a representation of what the good and bad of the future could sound like. There’s parts of this album that could be part of the soundtrack for a utopian future movie, and parts of it that could mirror that perfectly on the dark side.
Magdalena Bay deserves all of the praise they have been receiving for this album, and even more attention from it. Some critics have been comparing the innovation this album has to the likes of Random Access Memories by Daft Punk.
If you have not listened to Imaginal Disk yet, it is absolutely worth the listen, and is one of the best albums released this year.
