Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
The connection we believe we seek is not always apparent, it can come out of nowhere, it comes as we build monuments to all that we once held dear, it arrives unannounced as we see the past demolished in favour of new beliefs and loves, and as we come to understand the time it takes to see an Empire Falling, so we are struck by the enormity of the task in front of us to create a realm that will not suffer the same fate again.
Magnetic Skies are in the process of laying the foundations as they forge domain in the hearts and minds of the listener as the homage to 80s synth is revisited with evocative class and drive and propels Simon Kent, Jo Womar, Carlos Aguilar, and Lenin Algeria to finding the sense of the extraordinary potential that lays underneath as their pulse and ferocity of single-minded haunting music kicks in on their long-awaited Empire Falling album.
The euphoric and the melancholic not only co-existing, but thriving, may seem at odds in a state of human pattern behaviour; normally such a drama of opposition would be exhausting to be part of, both vying for a type of supremacy that neither can achieve; and yet as the album pushes at the memory of connections that saw synth bring a new wave of music to the heart of joy, both the emotional states, happiness in the enraptured discovery and the moody combative discontent play with a kind of rapture that is impossible to ignore.
Across tracks such as the openers Into Paradise and Fading Light, the single Suffocate, the enigmatic Darker Night, and the album title track of Magnetic Skies, the listener is left in no doubt of the sizeable contribution that the band will have on the conscious of those willing to build upon the foundations of elegiac positivity that tells its own tale the longer they dig and build a relationship with the band.
To make a connection you must be willing to see it for the beauty it will provide, even if at first you might not see it, for as Empire Falling deftly alludes to, you cannot create for the future whilst something rotten crumbles away in front of you.
Magnetic Skies release their debut album, Empire Falling, on November 3rd.
Ian D. Hall