There’s something about trees and storms in Iti Eta No. Heimat’s third album is an exploration of collage and landscape – not just the physical landscape of the French countryside where Olivier Demeaux (Cheveu, Accident du Travail) and Armelle Oberlé (The Dreams, Badaboum) moved after lockdown, but it’s visceral, emotional imprint. A violent storm left trees scattered across the road, and that image inspired the atmosphere of Iti Eta No. Heimat’s early records were a deliberate exploration of ‘Eastern’ tonalities, but Iti Eta No sees the group moving away from that kind of orientalist imagery. It feels more refined, like deviant pop made dance-floor accessible thanks to Krikor Kouchian’s (L.I.E.S, I’m a Cliche) mastering.
There is a distinct sense of characterisation and an operatic, mythic dream time to these songs. They are gestural and statuesque. The aptly named ‘So Long’ is eight minutes of lamentation that is also groovy and rollicking.
Heimat’s early work leaned heavily on German and Italian phrasing, but here there’s a new pull toward English. Not literal English, but the impression of it. ‘Tree’ is a 60s-style slice of psychedelic folk, it recalls Carola Baer’s The Story of Valerie, haunting and intimate. The glossolalia is subtle enough to miss on first listen, but once it registers, it deepens Heimat’s unsettling sense of numinosity and excavation. It’s lyrical storytelling where language is an emotional residue rather than communication. Oberlé’s made-up lyrics offer an asemic approach to songwriting that feels as ethereal as Coctaeu Twins’ Elizabeth Fraser, though more uncanny and liminal.
Part sermon, part vaudeville, Armelle’s vocal performance remains central. There are echoes of Malaria’s Bettina Köster and Blixa Bargeld of Neubauten fame in her sprechstimme and powerful lower register. Demeaux’s beat-making and production in Iti Eta No foregrounds rhythmic complexity, with elements reminiscent of the experimental side of baile funk and African drill, albeit accompanying European melodies and musique concrète.
Anouk Ricard’s faux naïf cover art successfully draws you into the esoteric weirdness of the album. Fresh from winning the Angoulême International Prize, Ricard brings a folkish surrealism that sits comfortably alongside Heimat’s sound. The dry humour and cartoon fantasy reflect the album’s balance of theatricality and ritual. Heimat remain fiercely leftfield, but Iti Eta No feels like an attempt to systematise that instinct.
Iti Eta No is firmly rooted in strangeness. There is a direct link between the collage approach and the strong sense of landscape in the album, a musical exploration of the terrain’s impact on our interior reality. The record’s fabricated language contains a powerful lyricism, that is both deeply literary and openly interpretive. The archetypal motifs in Iti Eta No uncover an imaginary, Byzantine dreamscape.
