16: Iglooghost, rockpooling for subgenres in a parallel world

As if we hadn’t gorged enough on lore last week, this time we
welcome one of electronic music’s boldest world-builders,
Iglooghost.


Iglooghost’s new album Tidal Memory Exo takes place in a
punk-dystopian vision of a British seaside town that’s been cut
off from the rest of society. It even comes accompanied by an
online forum where users debate the politics and micro-genres of
the local “tidal scene” (sporestyle, tektonikore, foamtek) and an
online marketplace where people sell mysterious sea creatures and
offer theories about their origins, among many other
diversions. 


Something else that interested us about the project is that while
Iglooghost’s early releases took place in full-on fantasy world,
recently he’s started creating parallel universes based in
Britain, bringing his lore-making closer to his own reality.
Prior to Tidal Memory Exo, he created a whole world around “Lei
Music” – a supposedly ancient musical style performed to
summon “strange, squeaking entities” in rural Dorset, the part of
south-west England where he grew up.


Naturally we spoke to him about all that and about lore in
general, as well as getting his insights on the ever-changing
nature of the online experience, his obsessive fans, TikTok as a
ghost town, and the risk of world-building becoming too cynical.
Never go full Marvel, basically.


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