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Imaginal Disk is American alternative synth-pop duo Magdalena Bay’s second studio album released in August 2024, following their 2023 EP Mini Mix, Vol. 3 and their 2021 debut album Mercurial World, a hypnotizing dream-pop project accompanied by wonderfully weird music videos that build heavily on liminal, early-internet stylings to create their own lore – something which I don’t think I’ve seen a band do recently (but do pardon my ignorance if you know of any!). You can probably already tell that I absolutely adored their debut, and you’d be right since I actually purchased the album on a physical CD!

Being a pretty decently-sized fan of their entire discography up to now, I had decently high expectations for this project and you best believe I pre-saved the album and listened to it the second it came out – something I had the time and energy for since I was (and am) in my unemployment era. What flooded through my eardrums after I pressed play on my now expired Spotify student-discount membership was track after track of illustrious synth-pop, with much more unabashed weirdness and storytelling compared to the duo’s previous work. Even on the first listen I could tell that a lot of effort had gone into this project.

The weird thing is, despite all the glowing praise this album received upon release, I did not immediately latch on to this project on the first listen like some kind of musical lamprey despite really digging the accompanying lore of the album’s main character True, the trippy early-internet world she lives in that you can access here (and I suggest you do because it’s a lot of fun), and her emotional turmoil after being implanted with the titular Imaginal Disk by a maniacal villain dubbed “The Doctor”.

It felt like I was missing something, like there was some unique insight or experience that everyone but me had which would make this album amazing. I think a lot of it came from my expectations – I was hoping this album would fit into my expectations of the typical light, easy-listening sound on tracks like Top Dog, Killshot and The Beginning that I was used to the duo putting out, and I let these expectations tamper with my experience.

But even though the album didn’t click with me on the first listen, the album’s second single Image did – a truly theatrical song that swells into a colorful explosion towards the end, over a fittingly maximalist, larger-than-life production that brings the cyber-horror themes to life with its mystical lyrics, there’s a truly addictive charm to Image, especially with the way lead singer Mica desperately screams “make me in your image” at the climax of the song, successfully creating a borderline religious experience.

I think having Image in my cycle helped me understand the rest of the album, because when I decided to revisit this album again a couple months later, suddenly every track was hitting.

Imaginal Disk sees Magdalena Bay developing their previous catchy, dance-able, dream-pop sound in favor of heavier, lyric-focused, theatrical tracks that bleed into each other. Having cited Charli xcx and Grimes (during her Genesis era) as their main influences, these musical influences shine through with the heavy vocal alterations. Though some tracks – like the track She Looked Like Me! can be so heavily processed that the lyrics are borderline unintelligible when the story is such an important component of the experience.

I will also give special credit to the fact that the story behind Imaginal Disk isn’t just a basic love story or a basic horror story using abuse and gore for shock value, but a sentimental story about rejecting the concept of an ideal self and yearning for self-acceptance. I think we could all use a bit of that in 2025.

Best Track(s): “Image”, “Love is Everywhere”, “Cry For Me”, “That’s My Floor”

Rating: 8.0/10