Without reservation, it can confidently be said that these shows will be some of the wildest performances seen this year. Birthed from the imagination of Gautier Serre, and soon after becoming a full fledged band with Laure Le Prunenec and Laurent Lunoir, drummer Sylvain Bouvier, guitarist Martyn Clément and bassist Erlend Caspersen, the music of Igorrr occupies an improbable intersection of baroque chamber music, breakcore, and technical and black metal. Branching out of hardcore techno, breakcore rose from the wreckage of jungle and gabber, yet no one outside of Serre might have conceived to fuse it with the operatic flourishes of orchestral metal and chamber music. Even fewer imaginations outside of Bruno Dumont would have commissioned Igorrr to supply the locus of the musical "Jeannette: The Childhood of Joan of Arc". This month they arrive stateside on tour with support from like-minded genre evasive explorations from Secret Chiefs 3, and Japan's Violent Magic Orchestra. Returning for the second time this year, Violent Magic Orchestra bring their "Death Rave" to stages across North America. Much in the way of Igorrr, VMO's endeavor is one of total annihilation of genre distinctions. Initially established by Yellow Swans artist Pete Swanson, and his unhinged explorations in deconstructed club music and hard techno, heard on albums like "Punk Authority". Swanson launched the outfit as a sonic ringleader and producer for the Osaka gabber-metal-techno four piece, drawing members from Vampillia and light engineer Kezzardrix into what the band describes as, "It's an art project of incomplete harmony of techno, black metal, industrial, noise, and emitting light". In the ensuing years, they have since flown under the power of their own wings, refining their production and manifesting even more energized hybrids of light, sound and dynamics at levels almost unheard of outside their "absolutely new and overwhelming experience" like those coming to The Neptune in Seattle and Portland's Roseland Theater.
