IVM Trio's 'Explain Yourselves' Builds Nine Rooms and Refuses to Hand You a Map
The Sonic Breakdown
IVM stands for Inner Voice Movement, which is both a fine band name and an accurate spec sheet. The trio — Sébastien Forrester on percussion and composition, Mika Oki producing (she makes fog-and-mirror installations otherwise), Apulati Bien producing and mixing — debut on Accidental Meetings as AM037 with nine tracks in roughly 36 minutes. Bandcamp Daily’s Matthew Blackwell gave the clearest possible account of the method: “The trio trades equally in sweeping, cinematic effects, post-club electronics, and free improvisation whose roles are, respectively: to put us in a place, to make something happen there, and then to defy our expectations.”
The Production & Mix
The Low-End: Forrester’s kit is the spine, and Apulati Bien’s mix keeps it percussive rather than processed into pad. “Triads” earns its 3:48 by starting, as Blackwell heard it, “in what could only be a subway with its echoing reverberations and mechanical, train-like rhythm,” then committing to a propulsive beat before deliberately letting the whole thing fall apart.
The Spatial Dynamics: Rupert Clerveaux’s master is why this works at volume — there’s enormous dynamic range between the church bells and gunshots of “Che Klows” and the slow-burn psychedelia it melts into. Blackwell’s summary is unimprovable: “IMAX-scale effects coexist with IDM-precise percussion and AMM-style improv.”
Standout Performance
bela, the South Korean vocalist on “This Heart is Determined Not to Shatter,” who brings full death-metal growls to a record that had until then been merely unsettling. Blackwell: she “pushes them into a sublime ugliness that eventually loops back around to beauty.” It’s 2:21 long and it recalibrates the album.
Why It’s Certified
Sara Persico’s vocal turns “Print” into a genuine trip-hop number; Grove’s spoken word on “Beryl” circles a lost-love narrative until she dissolves out of the mix entirely. Three guests, three tonal left turns, and a trio confident enough to let each one win. Boomkat clocked the range as “fractious ballistics to the edges of feral metal and dreamier vortices.” A debut this unbothered about legibility is usually a mess. This one is a maze, which is much harder.