Ladytron are celebrating the 20th anniversary of their classic, 2002 album Light&Magic (Nettwerk) with the release Light&Magic20, out 17th September
The group have assembled unseen archive material from the time, including a teaser reel, a short film of them recording the album in Los Angeles, and a posthumous music video for the title track, shot on slide film, which had lay incomplete for two decades. Further unseen and unheard material will follow until the anniversary of the album’s release on September 17.
“When we released Light&Magic it was expected that the title track would be a later single, and would therefore need a video clip of its own. But we were on tour and didn’t know how it would be done. We had all this beautiful slide film shot and envisaged animating it in some way, like a 1970s science fiction title sequence – Sapphire and Steel or something like that. We disappeared on the road, plans changed, and ideas were forgotten. Twenty years later here it is.”
Originally released in September 2002 on Emperor Norton records, the BBC named Light&Magic among 16 albums that defined 2002, and it made Rolling Stone’s top 50 for the year. The dance music press in particular embraced the group. Muzik made Light&Magic their electro pop album of 2002, whilst DJ callied it “dazzling”, insisting that it “blows most contemporary home-spun, dance-influenced pop music out of the water”.
Creating their own world, Ladytron were cited as leaders of the new electro pop and electroclash scenes and Light&Magic went on to be influential, for both independent and mainstream electronic pop music which followed, with some of the biggest artists flocking to the new sound. Christina Aguilera personally inviting the group to write and produce tracks for her album Bionic.
