MAGENTA SKYCODE

Main chronology:

• 2006: IIIII
• 2010: Relief

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Main Chronology

IIIII

1) Hands Burn; 2) People; 3) Compassion; 4) Open Air; 5) Pleasure of Love; 6) I Know You're Sleeping With Your Dolls; 7) Go Outside Again; 8) Luvher Oh Hater; 9) Red Eyes; 10) This Empty Crow

Big songs, big production - enough to create emotional heights from those grand swoons alone.

Jori Sjöroos is a man of many hats. Since the 1990s he’s been splitting his abundance of time between a vast amount of different names, restlessly starting and ending projects on a whim and in process quietly become one of the most ever-present names in Finnish music while largely keeping himself out of the actual spotlight. He's gone from the doom metal of Thergothon to the trendy and radio-friendly club beats of Fu-Tourist, and from cult success with This Empty Flow to actual critical and commercial success as the invisible third member of PMMP. Sjöroos has stretched his wings far and wide across his career, launching new projects each time he wants to try doing something new but most of the time he’s remained intentionally in the background for each of them, the connections between the albums only clear for those who read liner notes. Magenta Skycode is one of the few times when Sjöroos earnestly became the leading star in one of his CV entries, taking on the role of the frontman of a band though in reality he wrote and recorded everything by himself behind the scenes anyway. Magenta Skycode's relatively short period of existence is in tandem with the rise of PMMP where Sjöroos wrote and produced some of the catchiest and most openly direct music of his career for entirely different front personnel to put their lyrics to, and though different from a genre perspective Magenta Skycode comes across like a way present that more melodic direction he'd been immersed in with his own voice front and center.

The widescreen sound of IIIII has its roots in both 80s goth rock and the bombastic indie of its time period, but its core lies in pop-like instancy of its melodies. With Sjöroos being a producer first and foremost, he coats his melodies in kitchen sink antics and a pristinely perfect, multilayered sound. It’s all unashamedly high and mighty, but it’s guided with a vision - each layer highlights the strengths of the melodies churning in the core of it all and the production makes all those layers apparent. The one thing that Sjöroos does bury is his own vocals, which appear as largely incomprehensible series of syllables following a melody (with no lyrics in the booklet to help decipher them); thus the attention moves completely to the actual sound and the strength of the rest of the songwriting, both of which can withstand the extra scrutiny. IIIII sounds really beautiful, from the light twang of the bass groove to the shimmering guitars and shining keyboards - the band line-up may be a facade but Magenta Skycode do somehow sound like a genuine group of musicians banded together with a real dynamic based on the way the instruments interact (the drums are a constant highlight especially). They're lush and clear, while still having the type of warmth these studio-perfected records sometimes miss.

The dark-clad visuals of IIIII are a red herring: Magenta Skycode is Sjöroos' vehicle for indulging in any stadium torchlight anthem fantasies he has and so he plays them bright and loud. It's exciting and exhilirating in a way pop music does best, where each regal melodic swoon comes like a moment of victory worth cheering for, where each grabbing chorus is a rollercoast riding the thrilling downhill. It's all really confident in its own skillset, and Sjöroos has got the songs to back that ego up. His creativity was at its peak during this time as evidenced by the music he was writing for PMMP simultaneously, and IIIII comfortably rides that same imperial phase train. “People” and “Compassion” stomp with a rhythm-driven urgency as they throw in new hooks and layer old ones with each go-around, “Open Air” and “Go Outside Again” harmoniously reach out in wide open gestures in accordance with their titles, “Hands Burn” is the kind of a majestic slow-burn opener that would make any major publication’s year-end song list, (the horribly titled) “Luvher Oh Hater” and “Red Eyes” lean fully into the album’s ambitions of grandeur and present real stadium soarers, the former with one of the album’s biggest choruses and the latter with a fantastic instrumental finale with Sjöroos indulging in dramatic guitar solo gestures. Each song on IIII strives to be a capital Moment, even the slightly filler-adjacent vibe check "I Know You're Sleeping With Your Dolls" which brings the album to a moment of quiet before a sequence of multiple epic finales in a row in its back half. The excellent thing is, he manages to pull that off for most of the record.

I do readily admit though that my love for IIIII is purely superficial. The production is beautifully perfect in a strictly hifi-ist way, and that's an approach that works for me by default when it's done this well and the songs themselves have rich melodies for days - strictly as a piece of music, IIIII simply sounds great. The superficiality comes in on how I don't find this a particularly deep record, and that’s largely in part to how the music is constantly fixated on delivering those instant highs while the vocals are pushed to the back, so the intended emotional tone remains a mystery and the songs only speak with the exciting rush of cinematic hooks exploding in the sky. I don't think that's an indictment against Magenta Skycode or IIIII - the second Magenta Skycode album opens up by stating "the simple pleasures are the greatest" and I feel like that's a motto that speaks for the whole project. The songs on IIIII pull towards their exciting dramatic archs with staggering intensity every time the album is on, and that is absolutely more than enough to create a completely captivating record. If you're a fan of maximalist melodies and grand gestures, then IIIII is an easy bet.

Physically: Jewel case with a fold-out booklet with a lot of empty space, no lyrics. In a very Manic Street Preachers-esque fashion there's a sleeve quote: "Anything too stupid to be said is sung" -Voltaire.

RELIEF

1) The Simple Pleasures; 2) Kipling; 3) Night Falls on the Rifle; 4) Sometimes; 5) King of Abstract Painters; 6) Trains Are Leaving the Yard; 7) The Old World; 8) Escaping Outdoors; 9) Montag; 10) We're Going to Climb / Kipling (Reprise)

Moving onto lighter and airier fields from the debut, still scaling grand heights and brimming with melody but more at peace - and more resonant.

I finished the review for IIIII by explaining its power via a quote from Relief: "the simple pleasures are always the deepest". That was the motto why the debut's pop majesty - the moments of melodic bombast with pitch-perfect production, sweeping choruses and majestic peaks - worked so well even though, if you assess it with cold logic, it's hardly a unique album and Jori Sjöroos' flimsy front of a band had the personality of a well equipped studio. Sometimes all you need is just a song that slaps without any greater emotional resonance. The irony of using that quote from Relief is that as far as the two albums go, Relief is the one which actually goes beyond that.

The basic recipe is still as formerly described but in comparison to the stylishly moody IIIII, the blinds have been pulled back and the windows have been opened. The palette for Relief is brighter and airier, and the songs sound more open and positively glow, welcoming the listener in rather than suavely hiding in the dark club corners like the predecessor did. It's an album perfect for the spring: the soundtrack for the world moving on from the dark of winter and the snow melting under the sunshine to reveal patches of green grass coming to life, air filled with a crisp freshness. It's also much less of a 'band' album and it quietly drops the whole rock band pretense of the debut. Sjöroos has a couple of helping hands here (including his PMMP compatriots Paula Vesala and Mira Luoti in blink-and-miss backing vocal roles) but ultimately Relief has the air and aura of a classic multi-talented singer/songwriter/producer's album, where each song is given anything that suits the vibe its creator is trying to pin down and where recreating anything in a live setting is a completely secondary concept. By also moving away from the whole "ordinary band plays stadium songs" shtick, Sjöroos opens up Magenta Skycode's sound to less rigid structures, with sections where there's sometimes little distinction between a build-up and a verse and in fact where entire songs can almost act as dramatic payoffs to prior ones. The Chorus is still the center that everything else seeks towards in order to reach that perfect torchlight waving moment - and Relief has a ton of instantly great moments like that - but how the songs get there now is a different matter. It's probably my highly seasonal associations with this album but the one adjective that always comes to my mind is "natural", as in of nature - the songs play out like a wild growth of instruments and arrangements, in the center of which is a path to the lofty destination.

The new approach unlocks what kept IIIII away from reaching that next, more personal level that was readily in its sights but still beyond its grasp. Relief overall sounds more personal and, well, less like a stylistic experiment of a project and more like a vessel for human expression. Sjöroos' voice is less buried in the mix this time and while he's not necessarily the world's greatest lyricist or a singer, he's so much more confident here than he's ever been before and he soars through Relief with confidence and boldness without hiding himself with production techniques, which adds another layer to the album's overall earnestness and openness. It sounds beautifully at peace and overflowing with personal richness, expressed through these giant arches of melodies and multi-layered arrangements - and for once, Sjöroos' own voice clearly in the middle. It'd be hard to call him anything but a creator without limits (given his multi-project discography) but Relief feels personal and the title feels apt for it, as the weights fall off the shoulder.

As far as the actual songs go, the heavy hitters come up right at the start as Relief doesn't hesitate to start high. "The Simple Pleasures" (quoted earlier) is the big pop song to nail down the album's epic scales right from the beginning and it just gets bigger and bigger with each go-around to more and more majestic results, "Kipling" details the record's more free-flowing creativity with its mantra-like verses (if it's appropriate to call them that) and the sprawling jungle of melodies that wraps around the central shuffling beat that rides the song into the grand horizon, and "Night Falls on the Rifle" adds a touch of darkness from the debut to contrast against the rest of the album's light, eventually revealing its full colours in its harmony-laden chorus that deserves all the repeating it gets. From the opening salvo Relief moves onto a more understated middle section, but letting things calm down a little brings out some of the best qualities of Relief the clearest. The opening trio might be the best songs of the record, but in particular the flow from "King of Abstract Painters" to "Escaping Outdoors" is where all those nature analogies shine the brightest (sometimes literally, "Escaping Outdoors" and all), with an everpresent lush flurry of melodies and extended atmospheric build-ups really invoking that spring morning atmosphere of stepping out into what feels like a new world. They're slightly subtler songs than the big anthem threesome that opens the record, but the melodies are among the album's - and Magenta Skycode's - loveliest and they're honestly the kind of songs you want to wrap yourself into.

They also resonate, and that's the big thing. IIIII I enjoyed because it's full of bangers (simple as), but Relief actually works its way to me on an emotional level, all to do with those abstract seasonal sensory memories it has despite it actually making little sense (the album was released in October, I got a copy of it in December and my actual memories of it revolve around my time in university in the UK where you just get a weird weather mush that largely blurs together for 12 months instead of clear seasons that would generate seasonal vibes). Even "Montag", the one somewhat ill-fitting song here thanks to its atypically lurching tempo and its melodramatic gothic agony that's at odds with the rest of the album's mood board (from which the grand come-together finale "We're Going to Climb" launches off gloriously), has warmed up to me over the years because it's reached that point where it evokes some actual memories of my university campus that I cherish in my nostalgic rabbit's hole. Thanks to the new approach to songwriting and presentation, the same qualities that won over on IIIII are now able to turn these songs into scenes made out of audio that you can see yourself stepping into, and that vividly atmospheric touch edges it over into a great album. It's a shame that tis where Sjöroos decided to park the project apart from one last EP a few years later: on Relief Magenta Skycode started to turn from one project among others into an artistic vehicle with its own personality, and it would've been interesting to hear where he'd take it from here.

Physically: Digipak, the booklet is textless (apart from credits) and each page is a zoom-in on one of the scenes depicted in the relief of the cover (which in itself isn't shown in full on the front).