Three years after their acclaimed debut record Mercurial World, Magdalena Bay, one of the most exciting new voices in synthpop, is back with a new music video for their latest track, “Death & Romance.” The newest song from the synthpop duo rooted in Miami and Philly, and based in Los Angeles is easily one of their best tracks to date, a prog-pop odyssey that somehow one-upped the cinematic sound of their debut. Three weeks later, they’ve complimented the magical track with an absolutely bonkers music video directed by indie filmmaker Amanda Kramer.
The song itself blends the trans-humanist aesthetics of Grimes, the diva delivery of 90s Madonna, and the massive throwback sound of Jessie Ware. The version on streaming culminates in a spacey outro after five-minutes that abruptly ends right as it seems like it’s picking up again; the video sees that brief outro to its fullest potential, extending it with some fat moog basslines and glitchy FM synths that give way into a swirling arpeggiator.
The expanded video outro is a huge improvement on what was already a pretty perfect song, and that’s not even counting the ineffable video accompanying it, which sees vocalist Mica Tenenbaum in an incomprehensible tango between an alien being made of pure light, a bunch of space invaders that look like Animal Collective album covers that came to life, and a gothy alter-ego who ends the video with her forehead sliced open, turned into some kind of fleshy, Cronenberg-esque human CD tray. It’s somewhere between Liquid Sky, Hausu, and a bizarre Giallo movie you’d find on Tubi; whatever it is, I can’t get enough of it.
You can stream Magdalena Bay’s mind-bending video for “Death & Romance” below, and you can catch them at the Brooklyn Bowl in Philadelphia on September 17th. Details and info can be found at the WXPN Concert Calendar.