21st March 2015
IRM – Closure

Between his solo work and his long-running careers in both IRM and Skin Area, Martin Bladh has become a sort of tour guide of liminal states. While noise is abundant with artists whose work could be described as both personal and horrific, Bladh has consistently pushed the definitions of both terms to unsettling conclusions. His discography is rife with monologues of accidental death and murder; meditations on body anxiety, and disorienting fugues that seem to pull directly from the artist’s dreams. Though never exactly shying from the genre’s pet themes of serial murder and sexual violence, Bladh has always managed to place a hypnagogic filter over his narratives, resulting in a sound that is as unusual as it is upsetting.

From the first jarring moments of Closure, it’s apparent that IRM has no intention of compromising. This is an album about dissolution; the disintegration of time and the body alike. The trio of Bladh, Erik Jarl, and Mikael Oretoft are joined by cellist Jo Quail and drummer Ulrik Nilsson to present the final act in a trilogy beginning with 2008’s Indications of Nigredo. Closure draws a painful, if not baffling, conclusion to the narrative, shying away from the traditional industrial and dark ambient aspects of Indications… in favor of more brutal tactics.

Despite the swirling pandemonium of electronic noise and Quail’s droning strings, Closure is first and foremost a vocal album. Dreamlike spoken-word pieces, however buried, infiltrate each of the numbered tracks. Someone is sobbing (or laughing) as Bladh dispassionately describes murdering his doppelganger; clocks tick and music boxes fade in and out. Though the vocals are often obscured by a rather silly flange effect, Bladh’s singular shriek returns again and again, jolting the listener out of any introspective state they might have wandered into. A lulling, emotionless voice reads off a seemingly endless list of negative personality traits before plunging into the dizzying hell of Track Four; perhaps the album’s finest moment. Nilsson’s percussion is immense and ever-present, heightening a tension that becomes, at times, overwhelming. Each numbered track swells with discomfort, pointing back at the listener with self-loathing and accusation.

While Closure is abrasive in all the ways we’ve come to expect from IRM, its real power lies in its ambiguity. The over-the-top imagery conjured through blistering noise and spoken word is often vague and puzzling, yet disturbingly familiar to anyone who has ever had a really bad—or really good—nightmare.

Rating: 8/10
Written by: Rebecca C. Brooks

http://heathenharvest.org/2015/03/21/irm-closure/