Review Summary: Carefully Crafted Chaos Containing Creatively Composed Classical, AKA Iglooghost Goes To The Operahouse
Iglooghost has made a career defying expectations. He did it first when he made his way onto FlyLo’s Brainfeeder label as only a teenager. He did it again when he came out of nowhere with his explosive first solo EP,
Chinese Nu Yr. He did it a third time when he defied the odds and followed up the high results of that release with an even more genre-warping second album,
Neo Wax Bloom. One may have expected him to go one of two ways with his follow-up to one of the most acclaimed albums of 2017 - either he’d go in a completely different direction, exploring a new sound entirely, or he’d come up with a release that merely emulated the sound of NWB without building on it enough to stand on its own. After all, how do you expand on the sound of such a chaotic and detailed record? Fortunately,
Clear Tamei, one of the companion EPs recently released as the follow-up to Neo Wax Bloom, managed to bring something fresh enough to the Iglooghost sound to hold its own merits while keeping the style he has developed over the last 4 years intact.
At its core, Clear Tamei may seem like a rehash of Neo Wax Bloom. It’s got the same hyperactive-but-detailed soundscapes, the same bass-heavy beats, and the same frenetic sampling. However, Clear Tamei brings something new to the table that alters the formula just enough to feel fresh and exciting. What this EP does that’s really cool from both a compositional and sonic viewpoint is incorporate influences from a number of styles of classical music, adding a new dimension to its sound. These influences manifest in a variety of ways throughout the records. Opening track “Paleo Mamu” features chopped up vocal samples imitating the sound of a choir. “New Vectors” uses operatic vocals, strange sounds highly reminiscent of middle-eastern folk instruments, and various flute-like synths. However, the strongest use of these elements is on the third track, “Clear Tamei”. This track perfectly balances its untamed jungle chops with plenty of winds and pitched percussion, weeping solo violins, and composition reminiscent of that of
Kevin Penkin on the fantastic
Made In Abyss OST. Shreds of these influences pop up throughout the final track, the epic 7 and a half minute “Shrine Hacker”, including more flutes and a string quartet.
There’s a lot to really like about the way Iglooghost makes music. Everyone knows about his strange genre-blending style and the density of his tracks these days, so I’d like to draw attention to some of the more subtle elements I appreciate. For one, Iglooghost songs sound like they’re in the room with you. I wouldn’t call his music dirty-sounding or lofi, but they’re mixed, mastered, and expertly panned in such a way that they sound very natural. This is a feat when you consider how detailed these songs are - it’d be very easy for them to end up either very rough or way too polished, but Iglooghost strikes a great middleground that gives his music a lively feel. Another thing I love is how Clear Tamei incorporates classical elements beyond just strings and keyboards. One of the traps a lot of electronic music trying to blend itself with classical falls into is only using a string section (and perhaps a harpsichord if they’re feeling spicy and/or making artcore.) However, Clear Tamei features a plethora of flutes (of many different types, mostly fictional but usually analogous to a real variety) and pitched percussion instruments more reminiscent of modern classical. It’s certainly not impossible to make good electronic/classical hybrid with just strings and percussion being incorporated - masterful albums such as
Venetian Snares’s seminal 2005 work
Rossz Csillag Alatt Szuletett and
ETIA.’s heavily underrated artcore release
Jihadvent are clear indicators of this - but the greater variety exhibited in the instrument selection on Clear Tamei is a breath of fresh air in a sea of electronic producers trying to sound more emotional by adding some violins to their breakcore album.
I’d also like to shine a light on the fantastic rhythmic complexity of Iglooghost’s work. From the hyperactive breaks on “Clear Tamei” to the slow dancehall beats and 6/4 outro on “Shrine Hacker”, this EP is filled to the brim with a variety of unique percussive and general rhythmic ideas. This is another one of those things that’s sorely lacking in modern EDM, where a sea of four-on-the-floor house beats and two-step patterns have pretty much dominated most of the prominent genres for a while. I won’t pretend these are anything new - EDM has loved the standard house beat quite literally all its life, and the two-step beat is one of the most ubiquitous in modern music, not just EDM. However, I find myself missing the rhythmic experimentation of techno, jungle, and other genres that have now fallen into nichedom in favor of more streamlined developments that have made it easier to make a great track in exchange for some of the best elements of more complex genres being reduced. I won’t sit here and lecture you about how modern music is by nature worse than older music or how simple music is somehow inferior to complex music because neither it in any way true, but it’s really nice to hear something once in a while that brings back those rhythmic complexities without having to jump the bridge out of strictly-EDM territory into breakcore and IDM.
Clear Tamei isn’t a perfect EP. It’s still fairly similar to Neo Wax Bloom, even with how it adds to the sound with its classical elements, “Shrine Hacker” spends most of its runtime echoing “Infinite Mint” from NWB before it finally kicks off in the second half, and the transitions can be a bit rough - especially the transition from “Paleo Mamu” to “New Vectors”, which sounds like “Paleo Mamu” had its last few notes cut out in an audio editor. However, Clear Tamei continues Iglooghost’s string of defied expectations by working far better than it has any real right to. I’d love to see something a bit more adventurous from his next project, but for now this record goes way past being merely a good holdover, instead declaring its own purpose and merits outside of the monolith it seeks to follow up.
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This review was a collaborative project with granitenotebook - make sure you go check out his review of Steel Mogu!
