From the upward heights of the skies to the underground depths of the soil, Iglooghost can certainly find excellence in these terrains. Within ‘Tidal Memory Exo’, Iglooghost sinks his brand of jittery strains of electronica into the seafloor and excavates an extremely remarkable melodic and textural venture out of it.
In each project that Iglooghost undertakes, there’s always a sonic landmark that he creates where he pulls forth textures and melodies and allows them to venture into that landscape. Paired with their conceptual frameworks, it makes Iglooghost’s discography carries its own sonic fortress, as each project has its conceptual foundation that Iglooghost works towards and eventually morphs into its own environment. If ‘Neo Wax Bloom’ takes on an otherworldly abstraction where glitch, jazz, and EDM smother its overall field, ‘Lei Line Eon’ is more of an orchestral heavenly escapade where ominous bassy figures are moving in and out of the picture, then ‘Tidal Memory Exo’ immerses within the ancient and the undiscovered, where fossils and obscure beings are scraped out of the grimy and barking seafloor.
Towards creating this sonic environment, Iglooghost once again embraces the overwhelming approach to sound design that he has learned throughout his entire discography, yet it’s an approach that manages to land much better as Iglooghost has refined his skill towards carving electronic textures and arranging shambling melodic structures. Taking the prominent textural elements from the deconstructed club, UK bass, and even UK Drill and soaks them down to the ground, where Iglooghost meshes them together into an album that keeps digging deeper into the soil and the sea, sounding texturally immense and tactile all across the board as the melodies, vocal registers, and songwriting collectively awakens the creatures from their undisturbed habitat. ‘New Species’ and ‘Coral Mimic’ unabashedly immediately charge through with waves of bass, synth, and vocal call melodies that disintegrate and blast all across their compositions, a characteristic that is embedded within cuts like ‘Germ Chrism’ and ‘Nemat0de’, where the former song electrifies with a barrage of rapidly scampering melodies and the latter song’s club tune is boosted within bass warbles and stable synth pads that buzzes into their climax points.
Amidst that crux point of bulky melodies and production, Iglooghost manages to go further and provide more distinctive tunes within these compositions, an aspect that makes the melodies more dynamic as well as showcasing a dedication to giving these songs a structure that will cool down and modulate, something that he has constantly expanded upon his past projects that land in much riveting form in this album. The feverish ‘Allow Flea’ where its murky atmosphere gradually moves to the rampaging drum work that sweeps through, the contrasts between the grimy drill and sullen synths and vocals of ‘flux.cocoon’ that coalesces potently, the angelic chorale samples amidst jittery electronics and rumbling drill and bass on ‘Pulse Angel’ invigorates as the softer and harder textures allow the melodies to pulse with life, ‘Dewdrop Signal’ with its inclusion of softer coos, strings, and chiming keys that balance out the rumbling bass edges and Iglooghost’s flexible vocal takes, and ‘Geo Sprite Exo’ with its vocal chops and rickety percussion are well-arranged in the song’s structure to allow their passages to speed through. While ‘Spawn01 ft Cyst’ with its lowkey compositions and ‘Echo Lace’ with its shuffling repetition might not exactly be as spectacular, their variance alone and how they’re placed in the album keep the album not lose momentum and still showcase sound ideas that Iglooghost still pulls together extremely well.
‘Tidal Memory Exo’ continues a remarkable streak for Iglooghost as his control towards sketching out sonic worldbuilding with an ambition for textural and melodic flavor has once again pulled off, where the overall idea of taking his signature brand of electronica that needles through the jittery and the tranquil extremes into the deeper depths underground where the figures laying low are submerged with their unique form. While it takes an opposite conceptual framework and sound design from ‘Lei Line Eon’, ‘Tidal Memory Exo’ carries on the growth Iglooghost has as a producer, taking what he has found within the skies and unleashing them down within undiscovered territory in a striking manner. Furthermore discovering depths of resplendence as a result.
Favorite Tracks: ‘New Species’, ‘Allow Flea’, ‘Coral Mimic’, ‘flux.Cocoon’, ‘Pulse Angel’, ‘Nemat0de’, ‘Germ Chrism’, ‘Dewdrop Signal’, ‘Geo Sprite Exo’
Least Favorite Track: ‘Chlorine.FM (Intermission)’