Released: 30 Aug 2019
Format: Vinyl, LP

Tracklist:
[A1.] A Washed out Boy Taking Fossils from a Frog Sack
[A2.] Sleight of Hand with a Melting Key
[A3.] A Pulse Expels Its Brothers and Sisters
[B1.] Low Probability of a Hug
[B2.] Same as the One She Hardly Remembered

Theres a sequence in Memoryscapes, a lovely short film, in which irom set about fashioning music from a pile of pots, pans, saucepan lids and empty cans of supermarket lager on the kitchen table. Its the band in microcosm: cracked, insistent beats, rhythm chasing rhythm, a deadly serious playfulness, and the intimacy of close friendship undercut by the sense of emergency of a flashing torch. irom are all about the head and the hand, and the dark that always pushes against the light.

Were around another kitchen table now, and the three members of the band Ana Kravanja, Samo Kutin and Iztok Koren, in any order you like for this is a collective endeavour are gently fending off any question that attempts to reduce their music to type. Its not the first time theyve had to suffer a conversation like this since their highly acclaimed second record, I Can Be A Clay Snapper, became one of tak:tils first releases two years ago. Imaginary folk is Samos preferred description, but the word preferred is doing some heavy lifting here. You get the sense that the band dont much care for labels. Its also good not to know everything, he says. We dont want to play something that sounds like it already exists. (Although fans of psych, outernational field recordings, folk horror, Don Cherrys Organic Music Society, Rileyesque minimalism or mutant country might find a home, however fleeting, in iroms world.)

The band are more than happy, however, to bust two myths that seem to have grown up in the last couple of years. First, this is not Slovenian traditional (or traditional Slovenian) music. It might be produced from and by each of the three landscapes in which the band were raised the Karst, the hills of Tolmin, the eastern plains of Prekmurje but unpicking what came from where is an impossible endeavour, as Iztok points out: We know the impact of the landscapes that have influenced us could be measured, but practically its impossible because there are too many variables. Nevertheless, it is important that we ask ourselves this question, because it is like a compass it gives you direction, but it doesnt say what you will find at the end.

That quest, which starts with every song, and feels renewed each time its played and listened to, leads us to the second misconception: that irom are an improvisational band. For sure, improvisation is an indispensable part of the initial songwriting process; but its an expression of their collective manner of working rather than any musical statement per se. These are precisely crafted songs, each one months in the making, in preparation for the time when the mics are switched on and they can finally achieve what they need to without resorting to overdubs of any kind. Keen-eared listeners will hear a continuation of the last song on Clay Snapper in the first song of the new record: a nod, perhaps, to the fact that they began work on the new record immediately after the last.

But whatever has gone into the music, from the bands home landscapes to their previous and in some cases still current musical projects (classical, hardcore, flatlands post-rock), irom sound like no one else and thats the point: When we make music, its like making a new world, says Samo. The world of the new record A Universe that Roasts Blossoms for a Horse is indeed subtly different to that of the last: the viola still teases and tugs at the percussion (or is it the other way round?) and the banjo still periodically tries to break free and set up on its own, but theres a glimpse of electricity (that rarest of beasts in the irom catalogue) in A Pulse Expels Its Brothers and Sisters, courtesy of Samos homemade tampura bra, more vocals, albeit as unsettling as ever, and a new sense of spaces being prised open. What remains is that strange and unmistakeable irom groove, which exists to be broken down (as Ana suggests), and the dark joy that runs through all their work.