Maggie Thornton – Queen City Sounds and Art

SkyCivilian1_cropped — Sky Civilian, image courtesy the artist

Sky Civilian’s “Let’s Be Easy” trickles in tones into an evolving flow of sound until Maggie Thornton’s vocals drift in with the layers of minimal percussion and horn. Its downtempo but progressive tempo is the kind of music you’d want to hear someday if and when someone builds one of those space elevators theorized by scientists since the late Nineteenth Century and by science fiction writers like Arthur C. Clarke, Kim Stanley Robinson and Joan Slonczewski. It would be the kind of chillout song to make going above and beyond the world as we know it on that journey between planets and space stations easier to take on and to enjoy. And it’s just one of a few tracks from Sky Civilian’s new EP Open Door. The whole EP is the sound of looking forward and stepping into the future not with aggression but with an open attitude and a calmness of spirit. This isn’t the dystopian cyberpunk future but one more likely and one we’d all rather experience of more nurturing societies and mutually fulfilling lives. Thornton is one of the minds behind artist collective Meow Wolf’s truly mind-bending, multi-dimensional funhouse of art installations House of Eternal Return and the depth of creativity and attention to detail that she and the other members of the collective brought to that undertaking can be heard echoed on Open Door as well.