Bleep

Seamus Rawles Malliagh’s breakthrough LP as Iglooghost, 2017’s Neō Wax Bloom, appeared like a bolt out of the blue, gifting a vital idea of what laptop music could achieve with the right pair of hands. His highly anticipated solo follow-up Lei Line Eon gives a glimpse of the person in possession of those hands — but being Iglooghost, he invites more questions than answers.

Questions like, what exactly is ‘Lei Music’? Inspired by Iglooghost’s research into the little known tradition of spirit-summoning associated with his native Dorset, Lei Line Eon calls forth a pantheon of futuristic ritual sounds, delivered with the hyperactive digi-resplendence of a forgotten 1990s JRPG soundtrack. Iglooghost has always been a uniquely cinematic producer, and there’s a glitched-out Final Fantasy wistfulness in the orchestral strings and piano of ‘Eœ (Disk•Initiate)’, its romanticism soured by the impish noise-trap bounce of ‘Sylph Fossil’ and later echoed in an R&B tone by LOLA on ‘Light Gutter’. The formula keeps twisting with the LP’s other guest spot from frequent Iglooghost collaborator BABii on ‘UI Birth’.

As much as Iglooghost digs into his personal history here, the strange sound-world of Lei Line Eon presents more ever-deepening mysteries than its predecessors.