IAMX – Artificial Innocence

Artificial Innocence – Between Stranger Things vibes and sonic precision

The noisy intro is typ­ic­al IAMX – you know imme­di­ately what you're in for. The first arpeg­gia­t­or melody draws me straight into a dark world and imme­di­ately reminds me of the series Stranger Things. But while I'm still sink­ing into this mood, I real­ise after less than a minute: finally, anoth­er awe­some elec­tron­ic IAMX song that doesn't drift too far into exper­i­ment­al territory.

Although there are a lot of sounds and sound effects going on in the track, it nev­er loses its focus. Chris Corner man­ages to strike a bal­ance between son­ic depth and a struc­ture that doesn't over­whelm. In oth­er words, even for those who aren't die-hard fans, this rather quiet IAMX track comes highly recom­men­ded. It's a power­ful piece of synth pop at its best, prov­ing that com­plex­ity can work without exhaust­ing experimentation.

For me per­son­ally, this song is the best single since ‘Mile Deep Hollow’ from 2018. There have been some good releases here and there, but none have grabbed me like this one. I've nev­er really been into all the remix and acous­tic albums that have come out recently. So, selfishly, I hope that IAMX will do more in this dir­ec­tion in the future.

Listen to "IAMX – Artificial Innocence" on Spotify

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Lyrics of "IAMX – Artificial Innocence"

I serve my Queen
Submit and concede
Tell me how do I get some relief?
Land it some­where in between my Liege

Watch the slaughter
Every nerve and cell
And I bow and I con­tain the pressure
Oh she moves me like a pawn
Why can I not help myself?

Am I colder now?
Artificial innocence
What am I silicon?
Nothing makes sense, where is our united strength?
Why do we have to crash and burn before we return to presence?

I serve my Queen
Submit
I have extraordin­ary needs
I ping pong from silent to deafening

Watch the slaughter
Every nerve and cell
And I bow and I con­tain the pressure
And she moves me like a pawn

Am I colder now?
Artificial innocence
What am I silicon?
Nothing makes sense, where is our united strength?
Why do we have to crash and burn just to return to presence?

Am I colder now?
What am I silicon?

I have extraordin­ary needs