IVVVO dovetails prevailing grunge/indie-rock trends, twisted metal, hyper-pop and deco-dance fascinations in a blistered new suite for Nic Tasker’s AD 93

Echoing recent directions by likes of Mica Levi’s Good Sad Happy Bad and Dean Blunt affiliates Bar Italia, Portuguese Londoner IVVVO practices a sort of teenaged angst and ecstasy in ‘Bleached Butterfly’. It’s his fifth album proper, following from ‘doG’ (2019) for Rabit’s Halcyon Veil, and an optimistically titled ‘Greatest Hits, Archive 2010-2015’ for Lith Dolina, with a full album for the latter label’s parent, AD 93. Abyss X lends stylized indie-rock vox to the album’s titular blast of scuzzy guitar riffs and noisy bombast before IVVVO expresses himself across a collaged canvas ranging from the mentasm-streaked ‘Ceramic Chaos’ to woodwind-led orchestral chamber composition in ‘World’, taking in ample amounts of thrashed guitar strings on ‘Freedom’ and what sounds like a cut-up Kurt in ‘I’m Not Dead’, with sweeter indie-rock-pop pathos giving way to lurid trance shred on ‘You Know You’re Just Like Me’, and a very Mica-esque twist of discordant synths in ‘Drugs’.