RIP Magic – Light Over There
RIP Magic have barely stopped moving since they signed to section1 back in May. That deal produced Screwdark (W19), a track built on orchestra stabs and low, static bass that we said still felt made for a room at 1am, even as the band’s rooms kept getting bigger. Since then, it’s been twenty six dates opening for Tame Impala across Europe, and now, mid-tour, they’ve dropped “Light Over There”.
This one pulls back from the density of “Screwdark”. Where that track piled on layers, “Light Over There” works with looser, vaguer shapes, dub-inspired synth textures that don’t resolve into a hook so much as sit and hum. Tony Njoku and Louis O’Bryen contribute vocals alongside the band’s own, and the lyrics stay fixed on a single image: light hitting a wall, someone asking again and again for the lights to be cut off. “Can you turn the lights off for me”, goes the refrain, repeated until it stops sounding like a request and starts sounding like a compulsion.
It’s a strange single to release mid-arena-tour. Most bands chasing that kind of momentum tighten up, sharpen the hooks, make the chorus easier to shout back in a room of ten thousand people. RIP Magic went the other way. The emotional distance here is real, legs might be swaying but the mind’s elsewhere, and I didn’t expect a band this busy to make something this internal.
They’ve got All Together Now in August. Worth digging into if “Light Over There” is any indication of where they’re headed next.
