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Igorrr
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French multi-instrumentalist and producer Gautier Serre has been operating under the name Igorrr for twenty years now, yet each new record still resounds with a startling freshness and radical vitality. Steadfastly unclassifiable fifth album AMEN maintains this impact, blindsiding the listener with a new set of exploratory curveballs and continuing to surprise and unnerve even the most attuned enthusiast. Since signing to Metal Blade in 2017, the Igorrr name has expanded from one man's pseudonym to become a full group identity, but Gautier remains the project's guiding light and mastermind, so he's the best man to ask to describe the indescribable. "This album is definitely darker than its predecessors, it has such a very weighty and solemn vibe that has never been reached before in Igorrr," explains Gautier. "The fact that I recorded a real choir in a church helped this a lot, but above all there has been very long and meticulous work on the sound and the choice of instruments, and deep experimental research to create a unique sound design. Of course, because it’s an Igorrr album, there are some more colorful tracks, like Blastbeat Falafel, ADHD etc... they contrast very much with the ambient heaviness. I need tracks like these on an album, it helps to really get through it fully focused, like a shot of limoncello before the next meal."
With an urge to continually take Igorrr's multifaceted and challenging sound further forward with each release, Gautier has spent a lot of time cultivating multiple new modes and methods of working since 2020's breathtaking, critically acclaimed opus Spirituality And Distortion - which even reached number twelve on the official German album chart. "Things were in development in my studio that I haven’t done before, waiting for the right moment and opportunity to do it," he says. "With this album they found the perfect place. As an example I have in mind the track Silence, which is basically some very heavy harsh noise contrasted with beautiful operatic vocals and an orchestra, on a very heavy irregular drum beat based on a smooth piano. I have also in mind Ancient Sun, which is more like traditional music, trip hop vibes with a harp and a theremin, but with very unusual melodies. To give you a hint of how heavy some parts might be, I played a piano with an excavator to end the track Headbutt. I have always been fascinated and passionate about pushing boundaries in music, this album is no exception."
Joining the excavator, theremin and church choir in the arsenal of instrumentation utilised here for the first time on an Igorrr record, we can also experience the deep haunting wail of the dung-chen - a nine-foot brass horn used in Buddhist ceremonies, described by Gautier as the "authentic sound of Tibet" - and an "old giant rusty saw, made originally to cut rocks", pressed into service as a makeshift industrial gong. On the theme of metallic resonances, Gautier also experimented with the percussive possibilities of a blacksmith's anvil: "I smashed every snare on the track Pure Disproportionate Black And White Nihilism with a giant hammer to use the tail of the sound and make it more brutal," he reveals. But it's not all bad news for the eardrums: "Also for the first time in Igorrr there is a little baroque piece of music, not destroyed by drums and distortions."
Gautier has always made clear that Igorrr is as much about the influence of Bach and Chopin as it is about Cannibal Corpse, Aphex Twin and Meshuggah, but the source of specific stimuli gets harder to ascertain as the process is refined. "It’s always difficult for me to know from where the inspiration comes," he muses. "Music is an expression of life, and I would say everything, even what seems the most insignificant thing, can be a source of inspiration. I would say there hasn’t been one event or one experience that has lead me on a creative process, it’s more like a cumulation of everything. I love making music, my brain processes music all the time. You cannot imagine the amount of albums and concertos I create during my sleep. The challenge is more how to sort these ideas to keep the ones with the best potential, the ones that I won’t get bored of, the ones that I really Love, with a big letter L."
As you'd expect from such a restlessly evolving and fervidly creative talent, AMEN is an intrinsically different beast from previous Igorrr releases, in terms of both the end result and the process that made it. A huge leap forward for the future of the project came with the completion of Gautier's DIY custom-built working space: "After three years of hands in the dust building my personal recording studio, I could finally apply no technical limitation on my obsession for the perfect sound, I could unleash my madness and spend days and nights in the studio without restriction. I actually went way deeper on ideas on this album." Once again, assisting Gautier in bringing his extraordinary, iconoclastic ideas to life are an exciting cross-section of new musical guests: "The musicians here on AMEN are incredible, the musicianship is just crazy," Gautier enthuses. "Also some of the guests I’m personally very happy and pleased to have welcomed on this record, like Scott Ian and Trey Spruance for example."
Mr Spruance's main band Mr Bungle has long been a savvy comparison for Igorrr's ethos of tightly controlled musical anarchy and gleeful boundary-smashing intensity, the Californian loons another motivating force for the young Gautier. Like Mr Bungle, Igorrr stubbornly repels the sort of generic pigeonholing that certain media and fans love to indulge in. Asked if he's yet found any musical descriptors that he's happy with, Gautier has a perfect response: "Do you mean a word that describes my music? I didn’t see one, even through the years. Usually when people ask me what kind of music I do, my answer is « yes ». That’s the closest I got." He has a similarly shrewd, and endearingly heartfelt, reply to the question about any remaining unfulfilled ambitions, 20 years into a wholly singular music career. "You know, just the fact that my very personal vision of the music has such a big impact around the world makes me feel very, very grateful, so my ambitions are already fulfilled."
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