Watch Magdalena Bay Make Their Ultra-Trippy TV Debut, Performing “Image” On Kimmel
Mag Bay were on Jim Kim! Wow, that didn’t work. I’m not trying that again. But the fact remains: The adventurous LA pop duo Magdalena Bay recently released their sophomore album Imaginal Disk, and they got the internet going nuts. Last night, Magdalena Bay performed on television for the first time, doing musical-guest duty on Jimmy Kimmel Live, a show that I promise to never refer to as Jim Kim again. They took the opportunity to get real weird.
Magdalena Bay performed their single “Image,” which got a Grimes remix earlier this week, amidst a cloud of dry ice, with a rippling, undulating CGI checkerboard background behind them. The set went into increasingly random psychedelic vaporwave weirdness, as Mica Tenenbaum danced through it all like a mystical sprite. Midway though, a guy in a red star costume, I guess, came out and posed on some stairs, and the performance ended with him acting like he was putting a dirt-encrusted CD into Tenenbaum.
This imagery, I realize, all comes from the “Image” video, and Magdalena Bay’s faithful probably caught all the references. But I’ll be honest: I did not get a lot of sleep last night, and I had a very difficult time processing what I was seeing. This wasn’t a bad thing! It was like: “Oh, I have no idea what’s happening here. Let’s go for a ride.” Maybe it’s my imagination, but it felt like there was a longer-than-usual pause in between the end of the song and the crowd’s applause. Watch it all happen below.
They did a good job repainting those stairs.
@magdalenabaymusic Its time to clean and repaint the stairs for our Kimmel performance tomorrow
Imaginal Disk is out now on Mom + Pop. Read our recent Magdalena Bay interview here.
UPDATE: On Halloween, Rosalía dressed up at Imaginal Disk!
rosalía got her inspiration from imaginal disk by magdalena bay for halloween pic.twitter.com/OqWhrWUdg6
— grace dante (@misslefroy) November 1, 2024
La Rosalía?? https://t.co/ZCoDrOyZNS
— Magdalena Bay (@MagdalenaBay) November 1, 2024