Magic Island - Wasted Dawn Vinyl

The sound of Wasted Dawn was nurtured by Berlin. In fact, one could say that the city itself made an important contribution: the Casio keyboard heard throughout was found in the street. Magic Island developed under the influence of a close circle of Berlin-based artists, including friends such as Touchy Mob and Montreal's Sean Nicholas Savage (Arbutus). But in keeping with Mansions and Millions project of highlighting the musical connections blossoming between Berlin and eastern Canada, Emma of Magic Island hails originally from Toronto, Ontario.

Wasted Dawn grew out out of the singles “Dream Holiday” and “Baby Blu,” the latter of which may be a perfect song, in its own quiet way. It epitomizes Magic Island's aesthetic: diffuse and subdued, it has a crystalline sensuality, luminous but hard to categorize, appearing potentially fragile or immensely strong. Pushed gently along by the imbricated ear worms of an echoing refrain from the aforementioned street Casio and a twirling little piano figure, it's a love song whose directness is at once innocently flirtatious and maturely candid; yet its complicating coda signals a melancholy embrace of contradiction and bittersweet impossibility that gives Wasted Dawn a depth far beyond most bedroom-pop debuts.