Iglooghost

Drawing on the mood of the bleak, run-down seaside town in which it was birthed, Iglooghost’s latest record, Tidal Memory Exo is an uncompromising yet absorbing listen, helmed by one of the most uniquely talented – and uniquesounding – artists we’ve ever spoken to

While there’s much to be said for artists who inhabit their own sonic universe, Seamus Malliagh (aka Iglooghost) not only belligerently defies genres, but – on new album Tidal Memory Exo – bases his music within a land-and-seascape populated by odd half-formed hybrid creatures, the industrial fumes of a forgotten seaside town and the relentless, ever-pummelling waves. The 13-track album makes for one of the most captivating listening experiences we’ve had in a long time.

We caught up with Seamus to hear more about its creation and inspiration, and began our chat by asking about the origins of this concept. “I had been living in this grim seaside town in the south east of England. If you think of a ‘seaside’ town it probably sounds quite sunny and nice – but no, it was pretty brutal. I was inspired by just how stormy it was, and there was all this fucking sewage in the water. It had a really visceral effect. So, I wanted to make something that sounded like where I was living,” Seamus says. “I recorded a lot of it in this abandoned garage squat. It was pretty bizarre and different to the album I made before.”

Malliagh used the town as a canvas in which he’d build his narrative. Waking every morning, Seamus would cycle next to the brutal concrete seafront. “The waves would just be smashing against the cliff. It was horrendous.”

New species

Iglooghost’s wider conceptual universe was first established on his coruscating 2017 debut, Neō Wax Bloom and magnetic 2021 follow-up Lei Line Eon. While these records riff on semifantastical themes including tiny gods, portals to other dimensions and bizzare conceptual creatures, Tidal Memory Exo washes up the remnants of this otherworldly menagerie on the drab shores of this grey-skied coastal nowhere town. With the record’s concept set, the tracks themselves started to form. From the almost metal-leaning abrasiveness of Nemat0de and Germ Chrism to the EDM-ish, New Species across to the dark, hypnotic pulse of lead single Coral Mimic, the record pulls its sonic threads from an array of different genres. “There’s a bit of narrative around the album – a fictional thing that I’ve been working on. It focuses around this fictional scene, a hyper-real version of where I was making the album. There’s these warring factions of sub-genres – they have ridiculous names like ‘Post-Coil’ and ‘Germ_Musik’. I think there’s a point where all genres kind of become comedic. I wanted to take that a bit further and avoid that whole modern internet trapping of having to explain your music by using endless tags and descriptions. I think it’s funny to make my own up.”