Product Overview
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."
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."
Limited transparent beige brown marbled vinyl pressing.
Tracklist:
Side A:
1. Daemoni
2. Headbutt
3. Limbo
4. Blastbeat Falafel
5. ADHD
6. 2020
7. Mustard Mucous
Side B:
8. Infestis
9. Ancient Sun
10. Pure Disproportionate Black and White Nihilism
11. Étude n°120
12. Silence
