IOM: Spiritual Wasteland – Album Review & Interview

IOM: Spiritual Wasteland

(Cruel Nature)

Out Now

DL/Cassette 

As IOM, the new album from Iker Ormazabal Martinez on Cruel Nature Records, Spiritual Wastelands refuses to censor the view that some people are afraid to acknowledge as more than just a disconcerting vision, whilst others pray that its existence is a nothing but factual. Review and Interview by Ryan Walker.

What happens in the Spiritual Wasteland? Who, or what, ends up there? What have they done to deserve being condemned to such a landscape?

Ask Iker Ormazabal Martinez.

Approximating to The Swamps of Sadness in Fantastica from Michael Ende’s novel The Neverending Story, the wind-racked surfaces of LV-426 or Dali’s Persistence of Memory, The Spiritual Wastelands is a refuge for scum. A shore of residue. The eternal endpoint, despite which direction the wooden signpost arrows convince us leads to some sort of retribution. It leads nowhere. We wake up, try to wipe the dirt away from our eyes, and before a shudder suddenly snaps out of a freeze of incredulity, run towards the hills, naked and feral. ”The spiritual wastelands are a collective space, like a dumping ground for all the moral and spiritual trash of our modern society. It’s where all the hypocritical values and ideals pushed by capitalism, politicians, religious leaders end up, along with all the damage caused by our personal and work relationships,” says Iker. ”We don’t have a communal space to deal with this spiritual and moral garbage.”

Providing an ontological soundtrack for this ruin called Spiritual Wastelands, the ferocity new album by IOM on Cruel Nature is drawn from an admittance that, whilst silenced under the shadows of our deepest fantasies and stalked down the paranoid corridors of our private terrors, wrapped in a mesh of hegemonic tentacles that stretch and elongate from one system of power to another, suction cups sucking off any sense of individual distinction and sparing it no mercy- there is no collective site to convoke or confide the damage that has been done by this prolonged, everlasting grind.
AAIn turn, this only feeds the Wasteland. Fattens it. It feasts on our seclusion. It becomes a hideous permutation of what we fail to find a moment safe enough to say what we mean (and not what we think we should mean), a forbidden rendition of republic exchange, and we are inevitably, eternally entangled in the biomechanical architecture of its splintered landscapes.

If such an opporunity existed, then the coping mechanisms to soothe the afflictions of apparatus that, either next to you in bed, in the stomach of a ballot box, or opposite the dining table, mince us into meat, wouldn’t lead such an extensive explosion of corrupted political forecasts, tyrannical stronghold, mindless moral panics, mental ill-health crises, interpersonal witch hunts, arrays of addictions, death, etc. In this way, the Spiritual Wasteland is a monolithic, metaphysical, metaphorical ‘reap what you sow’ resort, a mirror with no reflection, a moat castle with no entrance, or exit – we simply arrive once the vote has been cast. ”Psychology can be a personal space, but there aren’t many communal spaces where we can comfortably share these experiences,” Iker adds. ”Even with family and close friends, these topics are often taboo or off-limits. Religion, which could arguably have been a place for this kind of sharing, is also perverted and causes more harm than good.”

Like K.K. Null on Sweatbox, The Light feat. The Seer is a slowly prowling rumble of rhythmic noise. A throbbing brain fust-fucking its way through a pitiful village easier than Mr. Muscle through a clogged drainpipe. With the aching, ancient oak wood screams of the betwitching Seer, a deathbed of wild, maniacal cackles and chipped paint breaths and echoing into the air, creating an enchanting vortex through which we fall, inevitably a dancefloor dropped onto some kind of gruesome future. A simultaneous ballet (or battle) of sexy electronica and terrifying noise, No Quiero Ser is an analogue odyssey of industrial experimentation. Translated as ‘I don’t want to be’ – it’s a deformed, glitchy uprising of rotating beats, snapping apart amongst a regurgitated ceremony of an Arturia Minibrute oozing slime from their tight openings, teasing dismantlement at any given moment.

Iker relocated to Barcelona from the Basque Country in 2004. It was here that he fell into the small but still engaging experimental music scene. Miguel A. García, who passed away in January, was an influential exponent of and from, this scene who worked in the field sound art. ”He was one of those people who made things happen,” recalls Iker. ”When I moved to Barcelona, he put me in touch with C-utter, a band from Barcelona involved in Radio Bronka. They had a show called Fuck The Bastards where they would invite touring experimental artists to perform live. I became a member of the radio, and that created multiple connections with other collectives such as LEM, Ojalá Esté Mi Bici, Artilleria Pesada, Magia Roja… Before moving to London, I was also involved with one of those other collectives, Ojala Esté Mi Bici, and to this day, I try to visit them every year.
AA”I have made many good friends with common views about music. I like to share ideas with them, get feedback, and see each other play live… I do like to see well-established artists as well, but if I had to choose, I’d much prefer to have a friendly community around with opportunities to share things together. Larger gigs for me are often like watching a movie, it’s great, but the interaction is not bidirectional.”

Along with situating himself within this exprimental culture, making music is inbuilt in Iker’s daily routine. He never stops. The album’s concept was captured in this commonplace practice, only evolving and coming into focus as the number of tracks increases, and the pieces formulate in a congregation of something cohesive enough to look at, not just imagine looking through. ”I just keep recording things and normally there is a point where I have quite a few ideas and common themes start appearing, ”Iker explains. ”It is at that point where I start thinking about the concept and about linking things together to form a bigger picture. In this case, there have been a few past experiences with mental health issues that have given shape to the whole concept of the Spiritual Wastelands.”

Although hardly an obvious commitment to Electronic Body Music (a subculture prominent in the 80s and 90s, reductively noted for its techno-fuelled physicality, dance-orientated mechanical grooves and cyber-gothic moodiness), the pelvis-melting influence is pretty hot from start to finish. Harnessed to express and explore the narratives of abandonment and regrowth of Spiritual Wastelands. This tool is a tool used differently compared to the Unlimited Dream Company, a record that underpinned its monstrous energy via an oscillating surge of industrial noise, itself used as a tool to confront cultural hegemony and expose societal fractures. ”The style does help deliver the message, but the same message could be delivered through many different styles,” Iker explains. ”With my solo project, I have mainly been developing two areas: one of them very rhythm-based, which is the one on this album or Unlimited Dream Company and the other area is a bit more abstract and freeform, which can be heard on albums such as The Oscillation or Kronos Kairos. Between both aspects of the project, I feel like I can transmit most of my ideas across.’’
AAAnd although the album is loosely tied, stylistically to the tumping, steel-beating athleticism of the EBM scene in the 90s, rather than present some pastiche of Leæther Strip, Rhea’s Obsession or Code Industry records, Spiritual Wasteland’s ingenuity can be situated in how Iker flexes his muscles bond that appears to be deliberately broken and adopted as a useful tool, a suitable production vehicle to reinforce and carry the larger connotations of IOM’s worldview forwards. There’s too much to say, and in too many ways, to sacrifice his standards to the level of a disingenuous, subcultural stylist. ”To put it in a different way,” he adds, ”the styles are not part of the album concept, they have more to do with how I have developed my musical practice and production skills.”

Alongside the writhing, underground-club-smash-on-Wax-Trax-that-never-was guitar grind of Self-Governance, upping the industrial ante with plenty of frazzled, cyberpunk soundscapes and a supercharged, head-against-wall chorus, punching in between the moments where the coast is clear, the pelvis-melting dystopian industrial electro-dub tactics of Delirium and Terror epitomise the essence of EBM the most. The former emits a ferocious surge of hot, pulsating drones, machines with their own minds approximating Skinny Puppy remixed by The Bug covering Clock DVA. A frenzied gale of trains rattle past as though summoned up to suck us through a screw hole in the wall. The latter wraps an electric headset around our heads and casts us into a cloud of oblivion, breaking the dividing lines between reality and the alcoves of our unconscious. Distant animations of clamorous, clanging noises suggest spasms of lonely clockwork breaking below the pressure of what is expected to keep in permanent states of motion, creating a rhythm as they creak into shape. Distorted stabs and solar winds gorge on all the senses. Everything dissolves after the immense swell.

However, although there’s something tantalising inbuilt in EBM’s DNA that captures the vibe menacingly pulsating throughout Iker’s work, it’s far from a simple reference based on how many Absolute Body Control records Iker has in his collection. As on every album, the collected tracks reflect an experiment of documented evolution- an ongoing process, rather than a fixation with results. This isn’t to cheapen the body of work before us- for that is something Spiritual Wastelands indubitably encompasses, and most likely informed by cult industrial pioneers and cassette label luminaries Esplendor Geométrico more than Nitzer Ebb. ”When I make music, I try to think as little as possible and try to make it an intuitive process,” Iker says on his approach. ”The use of distortion on rhythm has always been one of my main areas of interest, and EG do it very well. For quite a few albums, I have been using a Sherman Filterbank to distort drum parts with envelope followers. I would think that is how they were processing drum machines in their early releases through the Korg MS-10, so there is that as well.”
AABut the technique of teasing elements of the tunes out of their hiding holes via a spell of earth-shaking noise is a principle that Iker has been into since 2019’s Nothing.
AA”I tend to build the tracks around the rhythm part and develop a sound for those parts. The textures and melodies that reference other things or styles are layered on top of that foundation, and I believe this is what keeps the whole [thing] a bit more personal.”

Thinking about the robust aural pyrotechnics deployed by Iker, paints on the palette, a rainstorm of irritated artillery shells and bone saw atmospherics growing a cyclone between the synapses; does he even see music’s function as a tool? ”It’s a difficult question,” he ponders, ”maybe more of a toolkit than a tool. Music can go so many different ways and can be shared in so many different situations: dancing in a club, in live music venues, listening to the radio or playing it back on personal devices, deep listening individually or collectively. I don’t think there is a single umbrella for all of them.”
Perhaps the medium isn’t the message after all. Spiritual Wastelands is an album that defines being categorised in any of the above dominant listening practices. It requires complete absorption as an experience- a frantic passage between REM and waking up in a bloody field, a muddy forest, to create a sense of foreboding, geographical arrangements that define its view: formations of fractured landscapes – both physical and mental, that define modern existence.
AAAs a nation of tourists, as travellers, as the unfulfilled, yet refined origin of the grim, misshapen, calamitous ectoplasm that populates the Wasteland, we are swallowed by what we try to escape. We succumb to what we are afraid to discuss. Cocooned in a blanket of distractions. Unwilling to surpass the place where the ‘out of bounds’ warning is stabbed into an ancient mound, cutting a thin shadow across its vast emptiness. There is nothing to escape. Because escape is futile.

Delirium. Terror. Self-Governance. Words scribbled onto the walls that upkeep an underpass of crumbled brickwork in a hurried state of anarchy. The work of someone who has had enough of the suffering they have surrendered to with their lips permanently zipped up, forced to wear a wire and psychologically shoehorned into a fearful, snowglobes existence. Exposing religious hypocrisy, detonating political systems, cultural hegemonism, ideas of sacrifice and subjugation – the album is dystopian by design, as a lot, if not all, of Iker’s albums are. In their own nuanced way, Happiness and Sacrifice from 2022 (although Home Is Where The Hatred previously could also be included), Unlimited Dream Company a year later, and now Spiritual Wastelands form a bombastic, teeth-gnashing trilogy of albums that address a lot of hard-hitting issues.
AA”I guess that’s the closest to a political position I can get.’’ Iker supposes. ”As a society, we have internalised too much the idea of having external powers deciding for us. We assume that we are not able to tell apart good from bad except through an intermediary who is in touch with a higher power, or that we don’t have the self-power to evaluate our own actions. These are both an excuse to not be accountable for our own actions and a way into political subjugation.”

More Merzbow signed to Mute or Nocturnal Emissions on Metoplex than a gang of leather-clad titans in their aviators, a palpitating noise weaves itself throughout the album. An instrument altogether. A presence. Spiritual Wastelands is all filtered through Iker’s unique touch of blending experimental textures, production techniques using hand-made noise generators and oscillators, and a personal approach to composition that sees Iker experiment with ”different combinations of connecting the same devices,” to a mosaic of brutally sculpted yet boisterous results. This trinity spares the record from being a blatant, even benignly direct homage to history. This is nothing but forward-facing.
AADespite its theme of regeneration in the backwoods of a civilisation gone mad, this is not meditative work, taking stock of what has happened. And despite the damage and the Wasteland up ahead, optimism rages from those sentiments of imprisonment. An exhausting hope that guides us through the murky abstraction of abandonment and isolation unto better, more restorative and therapeutic futures. ”Yes, that is the basic idea,” agrees Iker. ”I think we all find some common expressions in music that create collective experiences that are very positive and make us feel that we are not alone.”

From the grotesque, acid-dunked dirge of Body as Object, all tribal rhythms engraving themselves into a plank of glistening synths and M.A.D, a thick slice of corruscating keyboard action complete with fluttering drums and indomitable drive – gain and decay dials firmly fastened to the right, but possessing a magnetic swagger whereby one can imagine Iker manning the controls – dilated pupils, foaming at the mouth, unshaven for months, possessed by the hazardous jam of this cinematic backwards breakbeat; each song is a fragmented tangent, a part of the album’s overarching predilection of social overdrive, political meltdown, scandalous religious dogma, and the coping mechanisms we create to sterilise and blunt their consequential sting.
AABut you could argue Spiritual Wastelands and Unlimited Dream Company are threads that form differently spun yet connected segments of the same story that Iker has been peddling for some time now (The Ballard-lifted Unlimited Dream Company and Body as Object, named after a book called Warp and Weft from Active Distribution that talks about reframing Traumas, ”challenging the views of modern psychiatry which often treats the body as something detached from the rest of the self” reflect this literary aspect of Iker’s work) specifically since his MA studying Audio Production.
AA”Of course, the songs are smaller bits of the general idea. Each song is like zooming in on something, but the overarching themes have been the same for both albums,” he says. ”Storytelling is something that has always been part of my musical discourse. At the beginning it was purely expressed through sonic material, but throughout the last 7-8 years I have also been focusing on the written aspect.”

Following the nose of desire in offering a token of personal gratification as a means of obtaining some other kind of intense, arbitrary reward, but also carving up a critique of the catholic church in all its perverted machinations; from further investigations of ”religious symbolism, competing ideas of redemption and the hypocrisy of the morally-appointed ruling classes”, Iker’s work is not to be taken lightly, lest we forget the state of the world rampaging both inside, and outside the fractured mental and physical landscapes in our windows. ”It is very painful to see to what lengths the psychopaths in power go to justify these actions. Capitalism shapes the landscape in both physical and mental ways, too. Especially in a big city like London, we are seeing how increasingly difficult it is for collectives and small businesses to survive,” states Iker. ”The loss of the Iklectik venue was a tough strike for grassroots experimental music, and other scenes are facing the same issues.
AA”It’s not something that relates to experimental music only, it’s about the impact of these closures on local scenes and local communities. If you look at it from outside the arts world, the impact is also devastating. You can hardly find a non-franchised cafe or pub in London anymore. We are all being pushed to have the same repeatable experiences regardless of where we go.”

A sonic protest not much to deter evil from inflicting its vicious methods upon who it should fancy fucking with; but as a reminder that for all our god-forsaken corruption, as lovers estanged from each other, as a species connected to the same leaking interface – the Wasteland is a deserved punishment for those who delight in twisting the knife a few inches to the left.

There is no irony in this antihero.

~

Photograph |  Keith de Mendonca ©

Ryan Walker | Louder Than War

Cruel Nature Records | Bandcamp

Soil Records | Bandcamp

Brachliegen Tapes | Bandcamp