The world of Iglooghost is one full of fraught imagination. It’s a crazed merry-go-round of thick club electronica, drum and bass rhythms, j-pop glitching synths and beautiful hyper-melodic explosions. Now teaming up with Kai Whiston and BABii, ‘XYZ’ expands and extends the world of Iglooghost whilst keeping the listener right at home.
What Kai and BABii bring are vocals, mastering and some wider expressions that push some of the music back to the 90’s era of club music. ‘Lux 2’ is pure Iglooghost. It’s a trippy mash-up of sounds, melodies, beats and basslines designed to vibrate your core. I love how the mixture of brash boldness and intricate beauty meshes together and the same can be said of single ‘Lockii’. ‘Drown U’ adds some sassy vocals which help expand the previously nigh-on instrumental world of music Gloo creates. It also plays with some of the old school 90’s club staple sounds but weaves in modern-day sounds around them. It’s really clever.
‘Maü Shit’ is the trios take on reggae beats. Warped and distorted voices are twisted like sound filters whilst short explosions of flutes and phaser guns stretch and ping around your ears. Shit has definitely gone down with this track – especially the taut final minute which is both anxious and cute at the same time. ‘C Thru’ is another banger as the trio moves towards fluid synth-pop with possibly the most accessible track on the album, so newbies coming in from the casual electronica world should start here. The vocal layering here is beautifully done and it is one of the few tracks where the other instruments are turned down to allow the melodic instrumentation to be at the fore.
That allows the heavy drone bass of ‘Teef Chizzle’ to hit harder. I love how throughout the album everything sounds like it is about to veer slightly off-tune but this is the track that uses that vibe upfront. ‘Barely Twins’ starts off like some kind of beat-em-up game soundtrack before shifting gears to focus on subwoofer bass twists, vocal chop ups and slinky beats. This allows the absolutely killer track ‘Lamb’ to round off the album in anthemic style. The track compasses everything that Kai and BABii bring new to the mix whilst showcasing exactly why Iglooghost and his compositions work fantastically.
‘XYZ’ is a technical marvel. Often you are busy wondering what on earth the sound is but you don’t question how it makes you feel. The beauty of the album is that it feels alien but dangerous and alluring at the same time. You simply can’t stay still when listening to it and with vocals thrown into the mix, it opens new doorways for experimentation and melody smash-ups. A superb album – this is now my living room club night jam. [Do you think I go outside?!]
Recommended track: Lamb
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Iglooghost, Kai Whiston and BABii - XYZ
