Iglooghost albums

2024

Tidal Memory Expo - 91%

Some music artists are just that- artists. They sculpt out of sound and the color of their music is the color of everything around them. Iglooghost is such an artist, you could call his music electronic yet it is rarely purely rhythmic. He also uses vocalists, more for the feeling of the vocals- like vocals as an instrument. On some of these songs ( the underwater feel of “Coral Mimic”, the echoing effects of Echo Lace”) the vocals provide percussion and the beats are the things improvising in the background. On others, vocals are only used occasionally or are like alien sound effects- the strangely haunting “Spawn No. 1” which is one of the most brilliant songs of the year. Conventional electronic music is just the paint he uses to put odd melodies into glitchy pastures- “Nematode”, “Germ Chrism”, and “Pulse Angel” show everything warped and demented in a fun and charming way.

Mostly Iglooghost (aka Seamus R Malliagh) is a producer of cut up sounds, and these sounds reflect the state of our confused world. The brilliant ways in which the songs are ‘catchy’ are kind of backwards and any kind of conventional music and normal to him is alien to most. On previous albums he has pushed for pure abstraction and offbeat jamming Neon Wax Bloom (2017) or even pushing for a kind of new hip hop collaborations Lei Line Eon (2021), but on this album he might have found his best balance yet of the obscure and the futuristic calliope of life. “Geo Sprite Exo” closes the album with unlimited potential for music that sounds like mathematical precision, equations waiting to be solved. I don’t know how else to describe it, but the music is very beautiful and rarely has the umbrella term rock music been used to create something as intangible and prismatic.

Best Songs: Spawn01, Echo Lace, Geo Sprite Exo, Coral Mimic