Iglooghost

Iglooghost, the project of English producer Seamus Malliagh, emerged with the amateurish experiments of Treetunnels (Error Broadcast, 2014). The producer digitally deconstructs the sweet "ballad" Oolong_tea, the ambient calm of Treetunnels, and whatever originally was Assam_tea Outro (reduced to a noisy mayhem). Several pieces employ a hiccupping technique best observed through the lenses of the exotic overtones of Earl Grey. Everything is twitching all the time, tortured, fragmented, dissociated. The idea is intriguing, the implementation feels unfinished.

His vision matured through a series of EPs. The EP Chinese Nu Yr (2015, Brainfeeder) contains, Xiangjiao, whose rapid-fire hyper-syncopated beat is mixed with videogame noise, and Peach Rift, whose feverish gallop is fragmented in a clownish manner.

The EP Milk Empire (Activia Benz, 2015) was a collaboration with Internet rapper Mr Yote. After not even two minutes of rapping, Iglooghost drops the voice into an electronic blender and from that point on for more than four minutes the rap becomes a mere abstraction. The manipulated voice becomes in fact a second rhtyhm, duetting and colliding with the drum-machine; or it becomes a sound effect duetting and colliding with the electronic effects. When the rap returns to the forefront, it is swimming in a viscous sea of debris. Around the tenth minute the instrumental base becomes a hysterical collage. The 13-minute second part begins in a magmatic digital swamp and proceeds with a more balanced fusion of rap, musique concrete and industrial music. The peak of pathos comes halfway when Iglooghost's production gets crazy busy and hyper-kinetic; but even the calmer section that comes after that storm is an audio minefield, endlessly detonating under the feet of the hapless rapper. Before the tenth minute a sax intones a romantic aria, children voices invade the soundscape, the tape of found voices fast forwards, and it all ends in parody.

The EP Little Grids (2016, Brainfeeder) is a more lightweight and even cartoonish work with each piece telling the story of an imaginary character: Xiangjiao the gelatinous worm of Peanut Choker jumps all over the place with an exotic melodic hidden in the mix; Lummo the old witch of Chinchou / Melon Lantern Girl's Choir indulges in a dance of drilling beats; while Usohachi the teenage bug bandit is sedated by his standards in Gold Tea.

Viewed from the perspective of his early EPs, Neo Wax Bloom (Brainfeeder, 2017) was an attempt to create form out of chaos and abstraction. It resulted in a sort of comic cubistic reinterpretation of standard genres: the jazz fanfare Super Ink Burst, the Brazilian carnival orgy of Solar Blade the circus polka Zen Champ, etc. The process of estrangement gets more sophisticated in pieces like Infinite Mint, whispered by Japanese vocalist Cuushe over semiotic debris of Caribbean beaches, African children choirs and Indonesian gamelan ensembles. As usual, the frantic and twitching dances are the most invigorating, carefully architected combinations of drum-machines, synths and digital effects like Bug Thief, Peanut Choker, the most spastic hip-hop contorsion, Teal Yomi/ Olivine (including the rapid-fire disintegration of Mr Yote's rap), and White Gum (that also blends in a high-pitched manipulation of rapper AJ Tracey). It's a frontal audio attack that borders on digital hardcore but spread over a much broader spectrum and less brutal.

The EP Clear Tamei (Gloo, 2018) focuses on the voice. New Vectors matches manic beats and operatic singing, Nama reaches new levels of acrobatic twitching while distorting what appears to be a crying baby, Initially, the companion EP Steel Mogu (Gloo, 2018) sounds like a less focused work, and certainly less vehement. Even the industrial attack of Mei Mode decays in a dreamy coda. But the seismic gallop of Black Light Ultra is another triumph of multi-dimensional rhythms.

The 28-minute mini-album XYZ (Gloo, 2019) was a collaboration with fellow producer Kai Whiston (barely 20 years old) and BABii (another creative beat-maker, as well as vocalist). The beats are less lush than on Iglooghost's solo recordings. In fact they are mostly forgettable. Lux 2 and Barely Twins sound like inferior remixes of his early EPs and Teef Chizzel sounds just trivial and boring. BABii is probably responsible for the more conventional song format of Drown U and C Thru. The eerie glitch-y soundscape Lockii is not what Iglooghost is best at.

Iglooghost's Lei Line Eon (Gloo, 2021) rewards sophistication over emotion, focusing on painstakingly assembled textures, but the technical virtuosity tends to result in meandering compositions. Past the neoclassical overture of Eo (Disknitiate), the dissonant cubistic collage Pure Grey Circle feels like a glitchy remix of his own early EPs. Sylph Fossil is emblematic of this cranky hybrid of avantgarde chamber music, musique concrete (a bicycle, a clock), jazztronica and drum'n'bass. The problem is that Light Gutter sounds like a remix of Sylph Fossil: the same idea and even some of the same sounds in the mix, despite the prominent violin phrase. The suspense of Big Protector better articulates the contrast between the free-form percussion, the violin and the electronic collage. Yellow Umbra employs the same method of chopped-up, dismembered and chaotically assembled fragments to venture into ominous ambient territory. These songs are the real heirs to Pierre Schaeffer's playful and almost childish noise experiments of the 1950s. Zones U Can't See detonates what could be a catchy song and then hands the shards to children, which are also protagonists of the following song, the relatively straightforward Amu (Diskod) (by the standards of this album). The feeling is that this is an album of missed opportunities and excessive tinkering.