ivvvo: dog

IVVVO mounts an ambitious debut album for Rabit's Halcyon Veil with doG, a double-LP of synth-driven panoramas painted in neon, riddled with rave tropes and rendered in hyperrealist, cinematic sound design. The follow-up to Good, Bad, Baby, Horny (2017) sees him unpackage and build upon that EP in all directions at once in a viscerally corporeal and sorely emotional salvo intended to be taken as his definitive opus to date. Across its 15 songs the London-based, Portuguese producer spells out a narrative as vividly hypermodern as a Nicolas Winding Refn flick but set in the fashionista underbelly of London, with crucial assistance on two of the album's highlights coming from soundtrack composer and Hollywood Medieval producer Maxwell Sterling. Like a magpie with fancy taste, IVVVO picks the shiniest and most affective elements of contemporary dance/rock/pop and electronica -- from deconstructed trance synths to blockbuster sound design and choral arrangements -- and then weaves them into searing, reactive expressions of modernity. The results are skizzy, veering from anxious to ecstatic and often in the space of one song. Kicking off with convulsive samples of Korn's Jonathan Davis wedged into the nerve-jangling opener "This Is Dog", the album bleeds with emotion at each step, from the heart-bursting Lorenzo Senni-esque style of "Life" to the clenched and knotted grunge reflux of "Forever Your Mouth" to the visceral, Arca-like incision of "Blade", while two pieces with Maxwell Sterling, the Coil-like arabesque "Untitled" and the vertiginous flight of "Last Days", seal the deal with decadent flourishes. Album design and photography by Lane Stewart and Collin Fletcher. Mastered and cut by Helmut Erler at Dubplates & Mastering, Berlin.