Amid the intricate heaviness and captivating elegance of Igorrr‘s music, there’s a distinct magic that not only offers a stimulating listening experience for everyone from metalheads to classical connoisseurs, but also a poignant reminder to embrace thinking outside of the box.
Fueled by a fearless pursuit of sound exploration, French musician Gautier Serre, the creative mastermind behind Igorrr, has cultivated a deep trust in his music-making process that he’s dedicated his life towards developing. Through his willingness to take experimental risks rooted in a vast variety of musical influence from Aphex Twin and Cannibal Corpse to Bach and Mr. Bungle, this perplexing yet graceful brilliance emerges.
On Igorrr’s latest work of art, Amen, Serre and his accomplished ensemble continue to forge that brilliance into a heavier, darker sonic realm, all while sustaining their constant urge to explore unconventional sound combinations.
“I really never know where the inspirations come from,” admits Serre in regards to the more intense and brooding end-result of the new record. “It’s true that I had dark times these previous years, so for sure there’s a connection to that, but I don’t have any precise event or idea of things that pushed me in this direction. When I was working on Amen, I was just inspired by darker color and sound. Instinctively, I just felt like going that way with it.”
He continues, “It sounds cliche to say, but it’s definitely the best album of Igorrr so far…I think it’s because I’ve just gotten much more comfortable with the Igorrr process. I now have my own studio and I have all the equipment I need, so I can improve and go along with creating music with no pressure of studio time. I can do whatever I want, at any hour I want. This gave me the opportunity to go further in every aspect: the composition aspect and the sound design aspect. I’m extremely happy with the sounds, it’s really natural and yet still really big…It still respects the organic mood I was trying to go with Spirituality and Distortion, but keeping this modern metal detail. Also, I was surrounded by really talented people on this album and that gave me the opportunity to take things further. When you work with people that really want to do something great, you can spend days and nights and weeks in the studio and try a lot of things and at the end, the result is better.”
After carving out his own path with Igorrr over two decades ago, Serre has continually evolved the project’s enigmatic fusion of extreme metal, opera, classical, trip hop, breakcore, Eastern modal tonalities, and experimental sounds. While the sharply contrasting elements of Igorrr’s sound could be perceived as discordant or chaotic, this music feels completely instinctual and natural for Serre.
“For me, it’s something perfectly normal,” states Serre. “When I hear other people’s music, I find it to be a bit weird, because the structure is strange for me. They’re missing so many opportunities to go deeper, to go more extreme, to make it stronger. And I don’t understand how they keep it the way they do. So, my music, for me, is not chaotic at all, it’s well balanced and well structured.”
Amen sets the tone with the heart-pumping opener “Daemoni,” immediately plunging into an ominous atmosphere that carries on through the album. Tracks “Headbutt” and “Limbo” follow up with a melancholic operatic excellence and blackened heaviness, while “Blastbeat Felafel” and “ADHD” infuse more of Serre’s mechanical experimentation and breakbeat madness. Amen also contains the cacophonous outburst that is “2020,” which stands in stark contrast to the more haunting, introspective depth of both “Ancient Sun” and “Silence.”
As usual, Serre embraced collaboration with a diverse group of skilled musicians, introducing instruments like the harp, theremin, excavator, and anvil to push Igorrr’s sound further than ever. He even recorded an entire choir inside an old monastery in Nice, France, resulting in some of the most captivating moments heard on an Igorrr record.
“It was a beautiful experience,” says Serre. “The singers were great, the director was open minded, and it went really smoothly. Also, the monastery was amazing because the reverb in this place was crazy, it was so pure and so clean. We placed the singers in front of the whole monastery so the voice would project and we could place microphones at the end of the building so it would have the long tail of the reverb.”
He continues, “I had no idea that it would work out, because recording a choir on its own is one thing, but recording for death metal tracks and an experimental project, it’s totally something else…we did many takes, but it ended up really good.”
To Serre, all of these components that come together to create Amen, truly represent a vision that he’s been shaping for years. Backpedaling and opening up about his journey through music and creative endeavors up until this point, Serre shares that he was “always fascinated by music and sound in general,” manipulating sound with machines since his early childhood.
“I remember I stole a double tape recorder from my dad and I found a tape with texts recorded on it,” recalls Serre. “I remember playing it, fast forwarding and rewinding stuff to find words really far from each other and record them in a different order on the tape – creating nonsense before I was 10 years old. As far as I remember, I was always doing experimentation with sound…it was just fun.”
Serre went on to learn piano, but truly found comfort behind the drums. Early in his musical journey, he drummed in a couple death metal bands. From there, his curiosity led him to experiment with different instruments, gradually picking up skills along the way.
“When I was playing in those death metal bands, there were always points when I wanted to push something further, but I’d have to get the authorization from the other instrumentalists in the band, and I couldn’t go as far as I wanted,” explains Serre. “I wanted to have a project with no limitations. I wanted to reach what I was missing when I was really young: a band that plays my personally perfect music. Since a teenager, I’ve been always searching for bands that fit my emotional state completely. Some bands get really close, but I have never found this complete variety of emotional state that is mine, so that’s why I created it on my own – it felt only possible with having my own project.”
“Igorrr is like an experimentation backyard: It’s just a bunch of trials and tests, and just having fun with sounds and music – seeing what happens. This is what Igorrr is made for, so we don’t fit to the general schema of a band, because the purpose is really different. It’s hours and years of time spent in the studio working with energetic music to continue keeping the pure essence of music alive.”
Amen is out Friday, and you can preorder it here. Follow Igorrr on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter for future updates.
Photo Credit: Annie Evans
