When presented with the endless options that modern production offers via Ableton, sample packets and the internet, many musicians find comfort in the limitations of a guitar or analog mixer. But not Magdalena Bay. “I don’t know why you would want to limit yourself,” band member Matthew Lewin declares to me over a Zoom call.
He and the other half of Magdalena Bay, Mica Tenenbaum, are walking their dog through a park in their current hometown, Los Angeles. “The beauty of making music now is that there’s no limit besides your own imagination, right?” There is conviction in his voice. “If you can think of a sound in your head, there is a way to get that out. You just need to figure out how to do it.”
On their new album, Matt and Mica have contained the endless expanse of possibilities into one Imaginal Disk that is chock-full of surprising and delightful sounds.
On the concept
Imaginal Disk is a concept album where Matt and Mica have discovered the missing link between primates and human kind: an extraterrestrial LaserDisc, inserted into the forehead. When the main character, True, comes due for a hardware upgrade, her body rejects it, and she must then learn what it means to be human.
“There are a few ways you can experience the story,” Matt explains. One is just listening to the record. You can pull some loose narrative from the thematic concepts and lyrics. And then we wanted to impose a more traditional sci-fi type narrative on top with the music videos. And then, if you go to our website, you can find out all of the lore about the characters and how it relates to the lyrics and stuff. Any way you experience the album is valid.”
On the album cover and reception
The album cover itself has become part of the culture. “It’s become a Halloween costume which is so cool” says Mica. It really hit the zeitgeist when Latin pop superstar Rosalía recreated the cover for Halloween and posted pictures of herself and the album to her 27 million followers on Instagram. “We were surprised. That was exciting,” recalls Mica. They didn’t have a conversation with her before or after and just appreciate that she vibes with the album, the cover and the concept.
“We had the concept for the album art very early on in the album making process. Before we even wrote half the songs,” Matt remembered. “We thought it was a really striking image. It helped in the process,” Mica followed.
The process to which she is referring is the process of narrowing every sound possible down into a 15-song, 54-minute album.
“We like the maximal approach to production,” Matt acknowledges. “The trick is figuring out when it is too much. And sometimes that means you have to remove some things you were really attached to. That’s probably the most difficult part of the process, figuring out when enough is enough.”
There are so many wonderful sounds on Imaginal Disk. On the album there is a stuttering sound at the end of the song “Angel on a Satellite.”
“In the keyboard band it is supposed to be the sound of a stuttering car engine, but our interpretation of it is that it is a disc jamming,” says Matt. “On the Juno [keyboard] it sounded like a busted up machine, but there was something hypnotic about it,” Mica explained.
They went further into the imagination of the album: “At the end of ‘Image’ there is the sound of…it almost sounds like a piano falling down the stairs. That was one we were trying to make.”
On ending with the look behind the curtain
After following the character True through the album and a sci-fi journey, the album ends on the song, “The Ballad of Matt and Mica,” revealing the Oz characters behind the world of Imaginal Disk. “The title separates the song from the main narrative of the rest of the album. Not exactly a credits sequence, but like a big finale where the actors come out from behind the curtain,” says Matt. Mica puts on the final statement, “You know, it really ties into reality in a meta way within the universe of this record.”