Magdalena bay, Gen Z’s answer to Pink Floyd

Magdalena bay performed their biggest headliner last night at the O2 academy, introducing their iridescent and transcendental vibe to one of the biggest cities in the world. Mica introduced the show with a blue silk dress reflecting the colour codes of the ‘imaginal disk album’, Matt wearing red with the drummer and pianist wearing yellow and green to coincide with the kaleidoscopic and vibrant atmosphere to the show, reflective of other bands aside from pink Floyd such as the Beatles in their ‘LSD era’ as canonized by the Beatles fan base. Matt and Mica’s creative intelligence is clearly not only shown with their music but also with their curated set lists for the show, seemingly trying to take the audience on an almost psychedelic trip. The stage is filled with interpretive captivating and illogical portals and and masks stapled into their arena set, similar to pink Floyd’s dark side of the moon tour, the prism signifying their elaborate set lighting and depth to their lyricism which Magdalena Bay have. Not only with the lyricism and ambience that their music creates but there are many similarities within the instruments they use as Matt’s bass and guitar are at the forefront of many tracks on the album with a backing track of a piano keyboard, reminiscent of the EMS synthesizer Pink Floyd used in many songs such as ‘On the run’ in Dark side of the moon.

Comfortable with their synth pop/rock post a transitional period, ‘Imaginal Disk’ tells the story about the harsh realities of life traditionally young people face and the deep rooted look-ism that has been on the rise within Gen-z in society. The record/album interprets the life of the main character true and the almost parallel twin she longs to be instead, who has a more conventionally attractive face and receives better reception off those around them. The live shows do not follow the pattern of the story as the album does, it seem Mica and Matt have tried to follow the story in more of a vibe interpretation rather than from a lyricism point of view, opening with ‘she looked like me’ on every stop on the tour so far as the track has more of a mysterious and mellow backing track to invite and tell the audience the type of music they’re going to be singing for the next hour and forty. This bold choice of creating a story from scratch and articulate this story from songs is a barrier that is being broken amongst this new generation of pop music as opposed to the traditional album with individual songs reflecting the artists or bands life story and memories they have experienced, however, it is not new. Pink Floyd experimented with a similar idea with the cult classic album amongst ‘synth rock’ in Pink Floyd’s the wall following the story of pink, an unconventional name just like ‘True’, experiencing problems with drugs, sex and family.

Magdalena Bay’s goals are clearly bigger than the academy and do predict that the group will go far, this can be seen with the spectacle they’re trying to create that is much more than music releases, announced by the group that their will be a movie released soon as Pink Floyd did with their film ‘The wall’. The movie will be based on their album imaginal disk providing full context on each song on the album. The spectacle is also seen live in their shows as they have perfectly chosen Allie X as their support act who also produces a surreal and hallucinatory sound. I believe and hope that the consistency of the music produced by the duo will be great as this is what will introduce them into the A-tier side of music and be in the company of artists like Billie Eilish, Beyonce and many more.