IGOR

As someone who’s been a Tyler fan since the earlier days, IGOR feels like the album where everything he had been experimenting with finally clicked.

This isn’t the Tyler of Goblin or Wolf, and it isn’t even really the Tyler of Flower Boy. IGOR feels like its own universe. The distorted synths, rough mixes, pitched vocals, and strange transitions shouldn’t sound this beautiful together - but they do. It feels deliberately imperfect; the mix is surprisingly explosive on tape, you can really feel the low frequencies hit.

What makes IGOR special, though, is the story underneath all of that production.

It’s basically the sound of someone falling completely in love, realizing that love isn’t being returned in the same way, becoming jealous and desperate, and eventually having to accept that it’s over. From “EARFQUAKE” and the excitement of wanting someone to stay, through “A BOY IS A GUN”* and “PUPPET,” all the way to “GONE, GONE / THANK YOU” and “ARE WE STILL FRIENDS?”, the album feels like one long emotional cycle.

And Tyler doesn't make himself the hero of it. Igor can be jealous, obsessive, selfish, vulnerable and genuinely heartbroken. That's part of why it feels so human.

The sequencing is probably one of its greatest strengths. I rarely want to listen to individual songs from IGOR without eventually wanting to hear the whole record. Songs bleed into each other.

As an older Tyler fan, that's also what makes the album so satisfying. You can hear pieces of the artist he always was - the weird chords, Pharrell influence, distorted production, dark humor and refusal to make conventional music - but now they're being used with much more purpose.

My only reason for not giving it a perfect 10 is that its deliberately muddy, distorted production can occasionally work against it. The tape itself; although, I love colored tapes, it has this sticker which bothers me more than it probably should... But those imperfections are also part of IGOR's identity.

That said.....

The audio quality on tape is outstanding, with an impeccable mix and mastering that demonstrates meticulous attention to detail, even for cassettes. The low frequencies are particularly impressive, featuring minimal noise while preserving that classic tape feel.

Favorite tracks: GONE, GONE / THANK YOU, NEW MAGIC WAND, A BOY IS A GUN*, EARFQUAKE, ARE WE STILL FRIENDS?

Final verdict: 9.5/10

This one hits hard to me personally hence the rating but IGOR isn't just one of Tyler's best albums. It's the record where he proved that all the weirdness that made people love him in the first place could grow into something genuinely beautiful without losing what made Tyler Tyler.