🐣 IGLOOGHOST — SŌLAR BLADE

Firstly it's like an overdose of caffeine and the juddering jitters that go with it, the free-form jazz of thoughts that hurtle round the mind on this sort of high, thigh-jiggling anxiety, dopamine cranked up rounds of it uzi-fire like a fanfare of madness. None of this negatively. The hyperactivity at work in 'Sōlar Blade' by UK musicmaker IGLOOGHOST is nothing short of addictive, compelling; it is not going on around you but instead it flows into you, it vibrates you, it enjoins us to join it enjoying the Jupiter storm swirls of it caught up in itself all wonderful, all jelly beans and jewels tornado jam. The never-faltering full-speed footwork beat pops and thuds in rapid-fire flurries like Bruce Lee punches, pugilistic, simultaneously knocking you into a, and out of your, stupor.

Pulsating columns of buzzing synth bass paw at your ears as they pour through the track like molten canals of lead and electricity, creating instant solid robust intensity, and over them crackling and fizzing like sparks and popping candy are gold-dust clusters of melody in an out-of-control strobing zoetrope of different textures and flavours – pizzicato strings, squeezy needling synth, triumphal trumpets, wheezy flute-esque noises—literally blink, with your ears, and you'll miss them, such is the depth of details dredged up from IGLOOGHOST's mind. And wiggling with these is a tract of sped-up nightcoreish vocal, whence it came is unknown; however it does infuse the cosmic playroom feel of the track with something external and real world, albeit warped and gibbering.

'Sōlar Blade' dips somewhere in the middle, and towards the end, where we enter this playful otherword courtyard garden of sound with birdsong and a dark mystic melody flashing interdimensional oddities at the windows, in the lightbulb, through the walls.

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• 🔔 This wonderful track is just one of many wonderful tracks taken from the wonderful new and debut album by IGLOOGHOST, Neō Wax Bloom, out today on Brainfeeder. You may attain it for yourself digitally and physically via this piece of clickable text.

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☟ IGLOOGHOST Internet Presence ☟
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🐣 DRESAGE — CENTER

At first listen this seems like a regular indie pop sort of song, you know, but there are touches to it that are unexpected, gorgeously so, and that's when you realise that actually there's a lot going on here—it's a cocktail of sound, a blend of different flavours that help to create this delicious unpredictable morsel of music. Called 'Center' it is this word that indeed places itself at the centre of this song, the word skipping in the choruses as sung by its creator, the LA-based Dresage. It's her vocal that adds one seemingly ill-fitting element to the bounce of the track, with her bright tone and swing rhythms and flitting melody, it is the epitome of breezy soul, best accompanied you may think by slapdash sixths and sevenths on a nylon string guitar.

But that is not the case here. The carefree spirit of her vocal pirouettes and leaps through the French touch infusion of the slow simple beat – the same robust kicks, the same semi-abrasive snares – through the rounded gloops of bass synth that nod in syncopation, simplistic and VGM-conjuring. It has this happy-go-lucky dewy green grass feel. Yet more elements subvert this: cuts of her own vocal breathy and whooshing rise up and down like a boat jostled by choppy waves, an inkling of glitch; and the most brilliant touch, a cluster of high-pitched tumbling piano, instant frosty chill in its twinkling notes, its far-reaching reverb garnishing the track with airs of melancholy; bright synth chord stabs that shock you awake with their plasma beam stridulation. 'Center' doesn't actually inhabit a central point, but instead is the things that orbit it, the influences and audiophilia on and of the musicmaker herself evident in the different moods it can conjure.

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• 🔔 Little bit of trivia for you: Dresage is also human person Keeley Bumford who has, amongst other things, contributed to the Bayonetta 2 soundtrack with the official theme for the game 'Tomorrow Is Mine', so there you go.

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☟ Dresage Internet Presence ☟
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🐣 JOANNE POLLOCK — EXPECT ME

The space in this track makes all of its sounds feel so wonderful, the breathing space between the experimental hits of digitised synth and beats allowing the tapestry of noises to make their impact and help create this sense of voidsome expanse, of space-anchored clusters of free-floating alien matter, this entity that exists in its own location and in its own time with no references to anything but the silence that frames it and punctuates its tumbling sentences and phrases. Listening to 'Expect Me' is like satisfying a craving: same way your stomach growls your ears yearn and for things such as this, these are tasty treats, Canadian singer and musicmaker Joanne Pollock spreading a controlled cacophony of booms, clacks, ticks, tings, trickling icy overdriven percussion.

Adjoining sounds range wonderfully, wildly, high-pitched synth twinkling, traditional warm chords, bops and beeps all bloopsome, squashed columns of sub-bass heavy and rumbling, gleaming otherworldly, so much of it unconventional and unusual all broken and fragmented abstract and collage-like, noises cut and pasted for maximum atmosphere evoking impact, her voice wandering amidst the thickets layered and just lightly airbrushed with reverb with this human quality that bridges the dimension where this icy music exists and your mind, part of you perishing as the poetry proceeds. How a sense of space sets this so far from the here and now, from your situation, reminiscent of nothing but instead Joanne Pollock's unique universe of sound.

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• 🔔 This is taken from Joanne Pollock's album Stranger, out now via Venetian Snares-owned Timesig, a Planet Mu imprint.
• 🔔 The fittingly abstract and alternate-world-summoning, very water-themed video for 'Expect Me' was directed by Desiree Deleau alongside Joanne herself.

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☟ Joanne Pollock Internet Presence ☟
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