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- Summary: The second full-length release from Los Angeles duo Magdalena Bay was self-produced and mixed by Dave Fridmann.
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- Record Label: Mom + Pop Music
- Genre(s): Pop, Electronic, Pop/Rock, Alternative/Indie Rock, Left-Field Pop
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Score distribution:
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Positive: 7 out of 8
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Mixed: 1 out of 8
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Negative: 0 out of 8
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Aug 22, 2024‘Imaginal Disk’ is a zeitgeisty time capsule of anxious post-internet existentialism and the online condition observed through a synthy flower-power lens. Here, Magdalena Bay are underrated pop messiahs at the top of their game.
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Aug 22, 2024At every turn, Imaginal Disk is ambitious and forward-thinking, but in the midst of all of Magdalena Bay’s playful self-styled performance art, they also manage to deliver one of the year’s most rewarding pop albums.
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Aug 22, 2024Imaginal Disk is a testament to good old-fashioned artistry – it’s the product of a band intensely honing what they want to sound like and ending up with a style so unique that it’s barely possible to describe. It’s dorky and strange and dramatic, like the duo themselves. And it sounds like nothing I’ve ever heard.
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Aug 22, 2024The album is bookended by a musical motif, a deceptively simple approach that proves that, despite its seemingly arbitrary twists and turns, the lengthy and ambitious Imaginal Disk is in fact heading somewhere.
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Aug 22, 2024With Imaginal Disk, Magdalena Bay straddle pop worlds, bringing together a maximalist dance club atmosphere and ecstasy-laced, burning Wicker Man euphoria, all filtered through a dial-up computer dream of the pop future.
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Aug 22, 2024Since their inception in 2016, Magdalena Bay have made aqueous internet pop and low-voltage funk full of pinwheeling arpeggios and inside jokes. Imaginal Disk sounds like that, but bigger and punchier—more keyboards! More percussion tracks! Add a string section!! Synth harp!!! The total effect brings to mind ’90s Madchester, the progression of Tame Impala after Lonerism, and peak CD sonics.
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Aug 29, 2024The radical optimist in me wants to commend Magdalena Bay for channelling their myriad inspirations without referential pussyfooting, but they play their theoretically dazzling palette so straight, with such frictionless segues that the bulk of its tracklist pans out as one proverbial thing after another.