TRACKS UNTOLD: IGLOOGHOST'S 'UI BIRTH' with Iglooghost & BABii

In this Lux Cache track breakdown series, we ask artists, producers, engineers and songwriters to uncover the creative process of their work in their own words. In this chapter, modern electronic music pioneer Iglooghost unveils the world-building and sound design witchery of his track ‘UI Birth’, alongside contributing vocalist and long-time creative collaborator BABii -- sharing behind the scenes photos of their studio space and exclusive content for premium subscribers.

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• Accompanying acapella for Iglooghost’s UI Birth available to Premium Subscribers on the Lux Cache Patreon.

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Cover art for Iglooghost’s ‘Lei Line Eon’, art by Iglooghost - released by GLOO.

LC: Could you talk about the narrative of Lei Line Eon and its relationship with the album sonically? Were there any key aesthetic references that you brought to the project?

IG: Lei Line Eon is all about this fictional genre called ‘Lei Music’ that’s practiced in the town I grew up in. When Lei Music is performed, it temporarily summons a weird morphing entity that reacts to the composition. I wrote tons of documentation on the album’s narrative in the form of a research website, as well as a short documentary - but for the album itself I definitely wanted the worldbuilding to be optional. I think there’s only so much you can shove in a listener’s face without it being obstructive and pushy, so I definitely try and keep it out of the music itself. To me it enhances the music, but to some people they might prefer to engulf themselves in their own world which I think is sick as well. I wouldn’t ever wanna make those personal experiences impossible via forcing people into consuming my album in my own ideal way. That said, if you’re into it - I put tons of time into developing the visuals/storytelling elements and there’s tons to dive into if it’s up your street.

Aesthetically I wanted to make a conscious effort to not let myself get stuck in any formalities I’d established during my first album. I tried to make a couple records in that sonic/visual vein and it just kinda bummed me out. Making Lei Line Eon was a fucking joy in comparison - and it suddenly felt like all these fresh approaches became unlocked that I felt were out of bounds before. I am very particular about consistency and visual coherence - so I was definitely worried about how a new era would look next to an old era… somehow it turned out ok though. I guess there are always archetypes and lifelong themes you naturally orbit around - so there’s definitely threads that allow the new era to be a spiritual successor to what came before.

Still from Big Projector Music Video, directed by Iglooghost

LC: How does UI Birth fit into the overarching narrative of Lei Line Eon?

IG: I definitely want everyone to have their own answer to this, but to me it definitely sprang from a little conceptual seed for sure. I somehow wanted to write something about strings of code and numbers, and how these dumb digital binary structures that power filesystems are almost a farce of real world atomic structures and dna. As a kid I got into poking around with the hexadecimal code inside roms of DS games and seeing how much it fucked with the games. It almost felt like the moment these little organic worlds in the screen became just strings of code and programming. I thought it was sick, funny, disappointing, and really weird. In relation to the album’s narrative, people who are interested in Lei Music are constantly pinching, tweaking and shuffling their arrangements to summon different entities. Different compositional structures will result in specific features of the entities being exaggerated or altered, so it’s like this constant hyperfocused pursuit to summon an aesthetically perfect being. I don’t want this to sound nihilistic or anything though because that’s just godless and dry… I just wanted to make a really pretty song about tedious humans trying to perfect and engineer awe-inducing experiences like total fucking losers.

Iglooghost’s studio space

LC: Where did the music ideas behind UI Birth start? What were the initial musical elements that inspired the track and at what point did you want to get BABii involved?

IG: I think UI Birth was the first album track where I started having fun with karplus-strong waves. These guys are a type of synthesis that basically physically models a really evocative plucked or hammered sound. You can make really typical midi instruments out of them (just boring pizzicato strings or crappy guitars etc), but I think the fun starts when you really take them out of their comfort zone. They loop through a filtered delay line which creates this subtle thud, which always seems to trick the ear into thinking they’re being impacted by a finger or instrument. This can get really fun when you utilise them in a way that feels otherworldly or impossible, because there’s still this interactive/believable aspect to what you’re hearing. I was making use of a lot of spectral EQing, FM effects, and absurdly tight/small reverbs… but it still kind of sounds real. This instrumentation is the core motif of the track - heard particularly in the repeating melody and the bridge.

I wanted this track to obviously inhabit a really spacious, melancholic and peaceful environment for the verses - occasionally punctured by these juttering moments of jagged synthetic impacts. They sort of act as a ‘clue’ to the drop, but ultimately I wanted that part to feel unexpected in contrast. For the drop, I was definitely gunning for this bizarre DnB moment that never quite kicks in. There’s tons of aspects of rollers, neuro, and jump-up that I think is just objectively exciting… that shite is just pure adrenaline and I think it’s often full of masterful rhythmic bassy sculpting. I definitely took cues from those types of tracks, but I wanted to just let them do their thing without having to play second-fiddle to drums. The idea of Vivek’s beautiful violin improv weaving around these big brutish squelchy bass punches works for me because there’s like… this faint substrate of humour that exists underneath everything. It’s just such a dumb idea but I still wanted to approach it with as much care as I could - working in these little flurries of emotive piano streaks and trying to harmonise the majestic shit with the goofball shit… until the goofball shit becomes majestic too.

With BABii’s vocals, the idea was to somehow blend mine and her vocals in a way that means it’s hard to hear where one starts and ends. I wanted our lines to synchronise and swap out with each other - reflecting the theme of overly-customising dials and attributes. The descending first word of each line is super fun to me, and it meant I could melt each bar together with these very drawn out recurring enunciations. With an album, I’m generally mixing vocal tracks within the same project file I’m making the instrumental in. I think there’s obviously power in having a consistent/uniform vocal mixing flavour throughout an album, but personally I prefer to integrate the vocals within whatever environment the song is pulling everything into.

LC: Where was the track at Iglooghost first shown to you? Was there any direction you both talked about before going into recording?

BABii: From what I remember, it was just a fragment of what it is now. Every time Igloo has asked me to do a feature or sing on his own music, I always ask him for lyrics, and even though I could write them myself, I don't want to run the risk of injecting my ego into his intricate world-building. There is no way I could understand the Lore enough to expand on it. Still, on the surface, it also perfectly fits the concept of the whole album, and I always thought it was cool that there were all these secret levels to it. We made the song at home (I am pretty sure you lived with us then, Kai). Igloo was making the beat in the living room, and I was recording vocals in the bedroom with some very precarious set up that was all balanced on a keyboard stand. When I first heard the song, I could already hear the melody and instantly knew what I wanted to sing. Once I had that part down, I was on a roll for a bit, but for then some reason, I came to a hurdle, and I remember being in a bit of a strop about it, and despite my bad mood, I powered through with Igloo's patient encouragement.

LC: What’s your process in creating new sounds and textures inside Reason? Could you break down a few of the sound design moments you used in UI Birth? (feel free to include screenshots + any extra samples etc)

IG: I generally create full tracks after I’ve built up a backlog of like 10 to 20 sketches and ideas that haven’t turned out much longer than 30 seconds or so. All those little ideas end up as project files that I harvest and recycle for a full song, so there’s always these vestigial remnants of the past week’s work embedded into any finalised ’keeper’ song. A process I really loved while working on the album was just straight up bouncing out WAVs of unused project files and shredding/annihilating pieces of them in fresh effects chains. I think chopping up and remixing your own drafts is a really efficient jump-off point for a full idea, and it’s fun to essentially ruin the original mixing by shoving it into intense resonators or flangers. Personally my go-to effects are often piles of ‘Sweeper’, ‘Pulveriser’, vocoder EQs, and destructive reverb set-ups. With a track like Sylph Fossil, those loud, staccato blasts of bass on the chorus are actually short, severed chunks of the first second of a discarded track’s drop… with that discarded track’s drop also originating from a sample of an even older beat. I just always gravitate towards sounds that feel like they’ve had months of fingerprints and over-treatment, passed from project file to project file - and seeing how much independent character and fullness they can germinate from the source material. That shit is really one of my favourite processes and is something I put the most care into.

LC: How do you approach laying vocals on Iglooghost's music versus your own tracks?

BABii: Every time I make songs with Igloo, I am usually given the seedling of what will eventually grow into an entire song, and I just sing as many ideas as I have over the same bit so that he has lots to pick and choose from. Sometimes, if the song is a little more developed, I try and find the sections where there is something in the music that I can latch onto when singing. There are moments in his complex or chaotic production, which would be super tricky to sing on top of when trying to figure out ideas. Still, it's really exciting when the vocals get manipulated and sculpted to fit within those parts.

My process when singing my own tracks is not actually that dissimilar. However, I start with a loop that I like and then begin adding vocals, which then initiates a dialogue between the singing and the production, and they both inform each other along the way. I might find something in the words that I have written that I want to highlight by adding something to the production that emphasises its meaning. For instance, or the sound design might influence the imagery that I use when writing the lyrics.

Iglooghost and BABii’s shared studio space in Kent

LC: What do you think makes the creative partnership between you and Iglooghost work so well?

BABii: We know each other incredibly well and are not shy around each other anymore, so we can easily escape our comfort zones and not get trapped in playing it safe. I also think we have a deep understanding of each other's work and how the other person works, so that really helps as well. I can't lie though, it hasn't always been this way, and it has taken a long time to get to this comfortable point. For example, I remember when we started the song 'Drown U',  I had to keep kicking Igloo out of the room every time I would sing. The first time we worked together was on 'Clear Tamei', which was over email, and I even felt pretty nervous sending the vocal stems back to him. Now I can just freely get weird and not really worry about it, and we can trust each other's ideas no matter how wild or rubbish they might sound, but as I said, it's taken time and a few successes in working together to get to this point for sure.

LC: Where would you place Lei Line Eon in the landscape of your discography and artistic output, compared to past projects and your plans for the future?

IG: One of my focuses for the album’s sound was trying to graduate from being a ‘fast squeaking music child’ but I think a lot of people expected this album to be another handful of fast-tempo production acrobatics. The thrill of that first stuff had definitely worn off for me, but I felt like I could imagine the next stuff in my head even when I was making fast shit. I’d always had this sub-idea in my head about trying to make ultra slow-mo, 999999KG antigravity music. Big gargantuan pieces that emphasised detail, negative space, and extreme weight. I could never really pull it off at all, or at least commit to it (I think the first sections of old era tracks like Infinite Mint and Shrine Hacker was me trying to get there.) I guess with slower music there’s just intrinsically less space to hide — moments are more drawn out and everything can be inspected by the listener more thoroughly. To get to the sound to where I wanted it to be, I felt like I had to kind of face my demons and learn how to play keys/piano (rather than draw quantised notes in) and also spend time learning how to make detailed sounds that worked in this new spacious environment. It all felt like totally different laws of physics to what I was used to, but I somehow got there eventually. It just took making like 900 mini sketchpad-like beats and a trillion bike rides. Fucking gruelling but now we’re out here. Genuinely so euphoric that I didn’t give up.

But yeah as for what’s next… I definitely have some more ideas that I need to get out that expands this new place. I think post-album is such a fertile (but short) moment and it’s always fun to ride that eureka-moment wave and just go nuts for a few months. Right now I’m making shit in a day that I would’ve killed for in the early days of writing the album. So so so fun.

LC: Both yours and Iglooghost's music has a world building quality to it, with an equal focus to the visual, conceptual and musical elements of each project. When did this all-encompassing approach first begin in your creative journey, and what inspired it?

BABii: It's funny, I think a lot of people would think that I had picked it all up from Igloo, but it is something that I have always been interested in and have always done. I have always made things; stories, drawings, photos, clothes, music, videos, design, sculptures; I would make anything, I can't be stopped, what can I say, I love making stuff. But I have always struggled with tying it all together into a neat little project, so it would usually go unnoticed because I would be being too subtle about it or not utilising all my skills. I have learned a lot from Igloo regarding how to bring it all together and communicate conceptual themes and ideas. Turns out you have gotta shout quite loudly about it and keep it at the forefront of your projects if you want it to shine through. But on the contrary, it is sometimes easy to forget that some people just want to listen to the music, but I guess it's nice that it's there if they're going to delve a little deeper.

I find it super interesting, though, when people don't think the visual/conceptual element isn't essential or even think about this stuff at all when making music because it really goes hand in hand. You can make music sound even better when the visual/conceptual element immerses you deeper into a sonic world or presents it in a way that changes the way you listen to the music or even just makes it sound cooler. The worst is when visuals do the opposite of that and pulls you into reality or makes something sound worse than it is because the visual has been considered or thought through enough.

Behind the scenes of BABii’s upcoming music video

LC: What advice would you give to artists just starting out that are looking to create layered and interesting contexts to their projects beyond music?

IG: That’s a good question - I guess I would just want someone like that to triple-check that it’s something they innately enjoy doing. Everyone makes music for different reasons - for me it mostly feels like a late extension of all the drawings and storytelling that I loved to use to augment real life as a kid. I have always been really interested in weaving in imagined and heightened exaggerations into real life things. I am extra as fuck so I just love seeing how far I can push the medium of releasing music into a place where it feels like reality and fiction is a bit blurred - so narrative and multimedia stuff feels necessary to keep myself engaged. That said, I don’t think it’s some shit we should ever expect out of every project - it’s extremely energy/focus intensive and sometimes the music has been designed to say everything that needs to be said. Some of the most evocative songs in existence are just white-label releases with no bollocks attached to it. So yeah, I think I’d just want people to make sure integrating multimedia work is something that feels like a no-brainer or not. I think the music definitely suffers for being relegated to like half of your artistic focus for sure, but to me it’s just how I’ve always enjoyed working. Another potential model for creating a context beyond the audio itself is a partnership with another visual or concept artist. Working with a pal to form beautiful symbioses in your respective blossoming years can result in mind bending shit as long as everyone is deeply appreciative of their partner’s value. In the alternative situation that you think you’re down to work on this shit by yourself, I’d say you just need to make sure the visuals aren’t carrying the music too substantially, or vice versa. I think conceptual art at worst can become a veneer to mask uninspired ideas, so just always be conscious that you’re gonna be juggling multiple practices that all need to be tended to at an even pace. They’re probably all gonna be informing one another, so I’d say just make sure nothing becomes an afterthought. Multimedia shit at it’s best is the lifeblood of a project, not just ornamentation!

Still from Lei Music documentary, directed by Iglooghost

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Iglooghost is a producer, composer and multimedia visual artist based in the UK.

You can stream/purchase his new project ‘Lei Line Eon’ everywhere and follow him on Twitter & Instagram @IGLOOGHOST.