Welcome to the weird and wonderful world of Igorrr, the one man band from France. With an early background in black and death metal, Igorrr aspires to “total music freedom” and has been active since 2005 in creating a hard-hitting experimental electro sound in the style of breakcore. With that go industrial, trip hop and baroque soundscapes. As you’ll gather, it’s all hard to categorise, and that’s ok with everybody. Last year Igorrr did contribute to The Algorithm’s “Brute Force” album.

Where to start? To say this is borne of imagination and is experimental in its structure and musical processes would be an understatement. Deliberately it challenges the musical sensitivities through sound distortions and waves, sometimes metal, sometimes classical, often electro sound effects. It is dark and moody, but it can be sensitive. This is the strange and arguably insane world of Igorr.

There are breaks between tracks and they have titles, such as “Spaghetti Forever”, “Cheval” (Horse), “Apopathodiaphulatophobie” and a not very nice one, but this seemed to me to be about the kaleidoscope of experiences. Loosely, very loosely, the structure can be a bit like “Tubular Bells” where each instrument is introduced in turn as they all fuse into each other, but here it’s a series of sound effects and experiences. Electronic Ephel Duath comes to mind too, if we’re in the business of comparisons. It’s upbeat, downbeat, it’s everything beat. Igorr himself equates “Savage Sinusoid” to juggling a million balls at once.

For the purpose of this review, or maybe as part of a much-needed psychiatric process, I wrote down notes with my sensations of what I was listening to from start to end. Here they are: manic scream, dark beat, distorted industrial sounds, kind of hardcore, baroque opening, man crying, “experimental”, dark electro waves, grotesque, female singing opera, Diablo Swing Orchestra?, nuts, creative, avant-garde horror, stop-start, accordion, danse macabre, Mexican, trumpet, avant-garde mariachi, shuddering soundwaves, lady opera singer, Paris street music, video games, electronic darkness, techno beat, meltdown, screams, chasmic depth, operatic insanity, India, classical guitar and song, pain, dark metal, echoes, drowning?, screams, reverberations, electro sound wall, old fashioned melancholic piano, dark song from a gloomy room, slow, haunting, electro sound waves, atmospheric, man entering from space, violin, sadness, sonic interference, classical guitar on a warm, sunny day, delicacy, cosmic interference, dark electro beats echoing sounds, operatic chorus, hardcore screaming, choir, organ, brief symphonic melancholy, darkwave electro, throbbing synth, classical guitar, accordion, Paris metro, stop, electro-oompah, growls, jolly tune, screams, drunken Mediterranean chorus, more electro-accordion jollity, gathering clouds, lady opera singer, guitar, electro Rammstein, death metal, angelic voice, irregular, start-stop, fusion of guitar and electro, screams, chaos, end, thrash, distortion, galactic war, nerve-testing, clang, fade, obscure electro, trip hop, Greece, galactic beat, sawing through material, echo, Pain Remixes the Known, grinding, industry, Robert?, melancholic piano, classical aria, tragedy, symphony, darkening clouds, cranking up, synth wave, heavy beat, sharpness, morose, depth, fusion of metal – synth, classical end.

And that’s it. Any questions?

(9/10 Andrew Doherty)