Photos and words by Carlo De Dios
Magdalena Bay blessed New York City with two shows last week and as a long-time fan who has been obsessed with their music after seeing them open for Charli XCX during her Crash tour, getting to cover one of these shows has already become one of my personal musical highlights of the year. In my opinion, they are one of the most exciting live bands touring at this moment, and this second leg of the Imaginal Disk tour further cements that reputation.
After their GeoCities-infused musical odyssey that was Mercurial World, Magdalena Bay—the duo consisting of Mica Tenenbaum and Matthew Lewin—followed it up with the critically acclaimed Imaginal Disk, an entirely new concept album that feels like a digitally enhanced evolution of their shimmery bit-crushed Y2K roots. Imaginal Disk continues to showcase the best aspects of Magdalena Bay—their ability to blend colorful otherworldly musical textures of modern synth pop, glitchy electronicore, syncopated funk, progressive rock, jpop, edm, hip hop etc into something bold and unique that consistently stays musically coherent with their style of tongue-in-cheek sonic world-building. Their genre influences run very deep across dimensions, but they smartly synthesize all these elements into something completely their own. Imaginal Disk’s bold concept is the perfect setting for the stage and the show immediately takes on big splashy twists and turns throughout, such as the fan-favorite “Image,” a dark pumping trance beat full of hypnotic synth pads that explores the paranoid concept of a disk-inserted memory wipe, as well as the grand arpeggiated crescendo of “Cry for Me” that had the crowd enthusiastically roaring in unison.
I loved this show so much that I went purchased tickets to see their second show at Terminal 5 and it was just as much of a disk-inserted adrenaline rush as it was the first night.
Listen to Magdalena Bay here!
Catch Magdalena Bay on the rest of their tour here!
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