Isis – bagonia (2024) – Album Review

Album: Isis

Artist: bagonia

Release Date: November 30, 2024

Full disclosure, I’m not the best person to review this album for any of its technical aspects, because there’s a lot going on here, but I can do what always do: tell you how this all makes me feel or something. I had a chance to watch bagonia (aka BAGLADY) perform at EQUALIZER presented by Heterodox Records in July and honestly it was a really nice change of pace for me. Their music is experimental in a kind of structured way. I know that makes no sense, but this is how I write and you’re just going to have to deal with it.

bagonia‘s music, to me, comes across as very unserious and whimsical. Life is just a hot fucking mess and bagonia is here twisting knobs and enjoying the soundtrack of their own life. Again, technically, Isis is well produced and there are some seriously catchy tunes sprinkled all throughout this album. How can I say this more clearly; this album reflects an approach rooted in play and abstraction. Razor-sharp in places, soft and gelatinous in others. But like any fun, experimental album, one catchy tune will bleed into another track and get engulfed in blips and squalls. Basically, repetition collides with seemingly spontaneous variation. bagonia achieves what a lot of musicians are missing in their music – cohesion through honesty. Or maybe coherence through intuition rather than symmetry. Does that make sense? Okay maybe to me it’s a reminder that music can exist as a process, an emotion, and an experiment all at once.

Anyway, this album is really fun and you should definitely give it a listen. Highly recommended.