What the hell, Magdalena Bay?
(Don’t) stop being so awesome!
Where do I start with this?
Ok, let’s start here: the year is 2019, it’s the height of summer. I’m an oh-so-tortured soul, roaming the streets of Berlin, wishing I would just melt away for good in this heat.
My heart is broken, not lastly because I’ve just essentially been driven out of the music community that I hoped would support me on my creative journey. The only thing I’ve got left are some loose threads - this one person still talks to me, that one person wants to meet up when they are in Berlin, and then there’s someone who’s moved on from the original community and joined this hot indie music publication Gorilla vs. Bear. They’re also working for a new associated label called Luminelle Recordings.
I follow Luminelle on Instagram, it seems like a beacon of hope, a sign that there is something beyond this exclusionary group of people I’ve been in with, people that wanted to teach me I’m unwanted by nature. From there on out, my eye latches onto every Luminelle post. What happens on this label is still close to my original community but it is also somehow nestled just outside of it. Watching their journey unravel feels like looking at the night sky and seeing that extraterrestrial life - however far away - exists.
And boy does it exist! Because soon I start noticing this one band that keeps popping up in Luminelle’s publications. Magdalena Bay. Always photographed from weird angles, drenched in acid colours, dressed in lo-fi Y2K visual effects and VERY much alien.
Intrigued, I check the band out on Spotify and stumble upon their first single “Neon”.
I immediately realise I’ve heard it before on some old algorithm-fuelled music rollercoaster ride. The reason I remember it so well is most likely the sublime key change that happens about 30 seconds into the song. At that point, “Neon” is going from D major down to G major yet it somehow feels like an upward movement - a trope I have encountered more than once in Mag Bay’s latter material.
What happens next is equal parts sexy and heartbreaking. I, an outcast, a pariah, keep playing and replaying the words:
“Take what you want,
Don’t look back,
Just forget about it”
I will sing them out loud until G major dissolves back into D, in a move even more subtle and graceful than before. What can I say? I’m a sucker for key changes!
For a while, “Neon” remains my heart’s only connection to Magdalena Bay. In a scandalous turn of events, I never mounted the “Killshot” train and by this point probably never will.
So yes, for a couple of years Magdalena Bay recedes into the back chambers of my mind. I am busy putting on my first live shows, then shocked by the pandemic, then flabbergasted at the fact that I wrote my first song, then waiting endlessly for life to begin again.
Cue April 2022. I have finally made my way to Montreal after two lonely, secluded years in Berlin. It’s an exceptionally rainy day and I’m walking down Boulevard Saint-Laurent, listening to music. Suddenly a song comes on, a song that instantly catches my… ear? It’s dark, dancy, gentle, haunting.
“September started sweet, then winter got so mean”, - the lyrics go, and the sentiment is accurate for the chord progression as well.
A cute V-I-IV chord sequence suddenly gets interjected with an almost menacing ♭VI chord - a little chromatic twist that plays so well into what I perceive as the theme of depression, a theme we’ve all been familiarised with over the last couple of years. The ♭VI keeps coming back all throughout the song, and every time it does I feel like I’m falling just a little bit, nudged into the abyss…
…until the song just casually explodes at about the three-minute-mark. And out of that explosion a new, slightly altered chord progression is born, one that ditches the dark ♭VI and adds a desperate minor iv chord instead. The soundscape ebbs and flows, dies down and slowly builds up, fills my consciousness to the brim only to disappear in a sharp flash as the song ends.
I’m a quick taker of self destructive chromatic chords, so as soon as the song ends, I frantically take out my phone and click back to it. “Chaeri” is the name. The letters on the screen are quickly getting obscured by raindrops. I hastily tuck the phone away and go for another loop on my way home. I listen to “Chaeri” 6 times in a row.
Back in Berlin, my curiosity gets the better of me and I track the song back to the album it’s on - titled “Mercurial World”. Same trippy visuals, same acid colors, a sense of an elevated semi-reality, a sneaking suspicion we are all doomed, but sort of in a fun way.
The first song of this record is called “The End”, the last one - “The Beginning”, and there’s one called “Halfway” in the middle. Is this an endless loop?
It does look quite like it, because I spend the rest of summer 2022 spinning this record in its entirety every freaking single day. If I miss a day, I’m either out of my mind or dead.
Next thing I remember is googling the album title - probably for the lyrics of the eponymous song? - and stumbling upon the loophole that is the “Mercurial World” website. Yes, there is a separate website devoted just to this one album. If you haven’t heard of it, open your browser of choice, type in mercurialworld.com and see you in a couple of years!
It has got everything you didn’t know you needed - quizzes about the state of your consciousness, early Internet-style eye-watering animations, pages with randomly scattered breathy vocal snippets and more, and more, and so much more. Browsing this website feels like crawling through a magic labyrinth with a constant possibility that the next step will catapult you through a wormhole of some sort.
When Magdalena Bay come to play in Berlin in 2022, i have zero doubts: this is the best value for money of anything I bought within the year. The live show is wildly interesting and weird. It has a robotic voice that talks to the band, trippy projections, psychedelic overalls and great musicianship.
Before long, the duo releases a deluxe version of “Mercurial World” and it somehow makes the whole thing even weirder. Apart from a couple remixes and new songs, which - excuse me?! - are top notch, the original tracks are now interspersed with short audio recordings called “secrets”. They sound like different voices speaking their private thoughts into an old phone. One person likes to travel between NorCal and SoCal. Another wishes their girlfriend would dump them. There is a time traveler that has seen everything’s gonna work out for you. And then there is someone whose secret is that they don’t exist and none of this is real-al-al.
A song in English that had one line in Spanish has now received a Spanish version, and that one line has flipped to English! Does it get any better than that?
Somehow it does! Fast forward to late 2024. Life has spun me in a whirlwind of frustrations, I’ve spent half a year away from home and I’m still trying to find my groove back in Berlin, struggling to keep depressive thoughts at bay (ha-ha! At bay!). I don’t quite feel like myself, my hopes to make music are at an all time low. All things fun, including Magdalena Bay have yet again been shifted somewhere to the outskirts of my mind. I still listen to a song of theirs here and there but frankly speaking, music as a whole has become a reminder of my failure, of all the time that slipped away.
Apparently, Mag Bay have released another record. Apparently, they’re playing a show in Berlin in November but I don’t have the mental capacity to think about going. The show is, unsurprisingly, very quickly sold out. Well then, I guess it wasn’t in the stars…
Except, one day before the concert I get a text from a friend:
“Do you want my ticket for Magdalena Bay? For free? I can’t go unfortunately!”
Well, who doesn’t like free concert tickets? I’ll answer this for you: everyone loves free concert tickets. I tell my friend I’ll go and decide to scrape myself off of the couch whatever it takes me.
The next day, I make my way to the venue - it’s way bigger than the one they played at in 2022 - and rightfully so. I walk in and scan the crowd - there are multiple people wearing hand-made headpieces that look like a CD is being inserted into their foreheads. That’s what I call dedication!
To my shame, I’m pretty much unfamiliar with the new record and I can only assume the CDs have something to do with it. I’m also the kind of person who can get bored at a show if I don’t know most of the songs in the setlist so my expectations are mixed.
And then the proverbial curtain drops. It’s showtime. Matt and Mica are on stage, surrounded by colours, projector images, and a full live band. The songs I’ve never heard before catch me and don’t let me go. In the frenzy of all these new melodies, and words, and costume changes (!) I find myself thinking again and again: THIS IS A GREAT SONG! THIS IS A GREAT SONG! AND THIS ONE! AND THIS ONE!
When I sprint to the bathroom mid-show, on a mission to miss as little as possible, I have to take out my phone next to the mirror - there is a melody playing in my head - the first original melody my brain fabricated since my return to Berlin. On turbo-speed, I record it and run back into the audience. I feel like something in my heart - some cramped blockage - is opening up.
The very next day I’m running errands outside, my hands full, when my streaming app starts playing a song from some related music list. From the first piano chords I can sense I’m dealing with a hit of a decade. Awkwardly, I regroup to free up one hand and take out my phone. The song is Mag Bay’s “Death and Romance”.
Later that night I’m sitting at my desk, doing some graphic work and running “Death and Romance” on repeat, just like I did with “Chaeri” some two years prior. Periodically, I hit pause, jump up, pace around the room, plague my unassuming roommate with ecstatic rants:
“No, just listen to this bass line, listen how it slides! Listen to the rotary effect on the vocals! Listen to the drum fills!! Aaaaah!”
Slowly, slowly, my roommate calms me down and I find myself back at my desk. In front of me - my personal notebook where I write down my music ideas. It’s been lying there for days, open on the spread where I was brainstorming names for my solo project - something I’d been dreaming of but too scared to even begin imagining.
“Death and Romance” is playing on a loop, probably for the tenth time now. I grab my pen and cross out every project name I came up with before. Below them, I write in big cursive letters:
THE RIRIVERSE
You’re so funny 😂 I liked the way this band was the unifying thread in a sea of chaotic emotions over a vast expanse of time, some bands are like that for me too.
The transformative power and beauty of music is encapsulated profoundly here, and I really like how your asides make my mind go what? Why?!
I checked them out, and they’re pretty fun. I know I’m hitching a freight train somewhere in the Deep South of my mind playing a beat up acoustic with the drifters, but this saccharine pop is tasty ear candy. I also love melodic things, and this band is good at that.
So many bands make me feel similarly unhinged and I have to go check out everything they’ve ever done and latch on for a while. This exact kinda thing happens to me more or less every week!
I can’t understand the boredom at gigs thing, and will end up going to most that even closely resonate. Live music is completely where it’s at, records are great, but nowhere near the beauty of witnessing several people who may or may not know each other struggling against entropy on a (usually) raised platform in front of a crowd of innocent bystanders.
This band sound like they are astounding live, and am really gutted I’ve not checked them out before in that respect mostly.
Thanks for sharing the love, it’s so refreshing to read really well written articles describing what it’s like to be going crazy over music. This type of thing you’re doing is highly potent and original, and really resonates with me!
I love it...I have been wanting to ask where your band / project name came from, but was too shy to ask. NOW I know...and it was such a fun way to find out ! I think we've bonded because you feel and live music the same way I do...and I turned 62 this year, but music has always been my life, my caregiver, my refuge. May it always bring you the joy and creativity it gives me !!!