IAMX

IAMX was never about clean endings and Fault Lines didn’t get one either.

Instead, it lingers. In fragments, in tracks that didn’t quite belong. The recent releases, UNMASK EP and IAMIXED: Reworks Fault Lines Albums 1 and 2, pick up right there. UNMASK brings those “orphans” into the light — raw, exposed, sometimes uncomfortably close. IAMIXED goes the other way, handing the same material to others and letting it come back changed. It doesn’t close anything. It unsettles it.

Now IAMX heads back out across Europe — from Thale and Hildesheim to Manchester, Leiria, Oberhausen and Berlin, with stops at M’era Luna, Infest, Extramuralhas and UNITY. Not always an obvious fit — which might be exactly the point. Britta Pirkko caught up with IAMX frontman Chris Corner.

UNMASK EP feels like a collection of fragments that never fully settled — emotionally charged pieces that existed on the margins of the Fault Lines era. When you returned to them, did it feel like giving those “orphans” a home… or more like confronting parts of yourself you had deliberately left behind?

Well, yeah, it’s a funny little collection of curios. Those songs were deliberately kept off those albums. Why, I’m not fully conscious of, but they are definitely orphans and fragments. Little but very deep fragments. I think they’re dragging me into a different way of being. They belong neither in Fault Lines 1 nor 2, and they were not quite right for a new era. So they’re very transitional, and they definitely mirror what’s going on with me privately.

With IAMIXED: Reworks Fault Lines Albums 1 and 2, you’re handing your work over to others — inviting them to dismantle and rebuild it in their own language. What interests you most in that process: the loss of control, the unpredictability… or the possibility that someone might reveal something in your own music that you never fully understood yourself?

I love handing control to people who I feel might do something interesting. It’s a bit of a contradiction, because I can be a control freak, but I also love letting go. It reinvigorates my faith in other people’s abilities. That’s always a nice thing, because I forget that when I spend a lot of time alone, creating by myself, and being very hard on myself.

UNMASK and IAMIXED feel like two very different organisms — one inward, stripped, almost uncomfortable in its intimacy; the other outward, collaborative, constantly shifting. At what point did you realize these were not just companion releases, but two completely different ways of processing the same era?

I think they’ve always been different. That’s my opinion. It just shows the two IAMX sides, the schizophrenic duality. This is what I love to do. I thrive on hot and cold, dark and light, bleak and hope. I need both of those things to exist. It’s not necessarily the most balanced way of living, but I’ve made peace with it.

There is an uncomfortable intimacy that I love to explore with UNMASK. The title itself says everything, you know? Pulling down walls, accepting the rawness of the true self, accepting the flaws of others, letting go of expectations, and going through emotional turmoil that is out of your control. That’s often what I’m talking about. It’s uncomfortable intimacy. And then there’s the flip side, a certain kind of hedonistic relief that dancing and remixing and that more wild, almost frivolous production brings. It’s an odd way of working, because I never really think about it. It’s just natural to flip between the two. But when you put them together like that, it’s not necessarily normal.

But I love it. I love them both. I feel there’s a certain authenticity in both extremes—going out, getting fucked up, losing yourself in the banality and ridiculousness of existence, escapism, hedonism. There’s something authentic in that. As destructive as it sounds, there is a certain beauty in it. The remix world offers that to me.

Reworking your own material versus hearing it reinterpreted by others are two very different kinds of exposure. When you strip something down yourself — like on UNMASK — does that feel more honest… or more controlled than letting someone else reshape it entirely on IAMIXED?

I honestly think it’s never finished, so there is a certain drive to keep reworking something if I have the time and a reason to do it. That reason can be offering it to fans in a different way, or it can just be the mood of the day. The honesty, if there is any, is in the fact that it’s just never done. That’s art in general. I don’t think it’s ever truly finished. Reinterpretation also feels authentic. Art is always built on what’s been before anyway. It’s kind of regurgitating the same basic human emotion in slightly novel ways. I like both.

The reworking usually comes from something unresolved, something that’s been bugging me that I haven’t been able to put to rest. There are still tracks I like that just never feel complete to me. Ironically, some of the tracks people love are the ones I can’t even listen to. So there’s a lot of subjectivity there. But there is something in taking something old and reworking it. Something satisfying about it, but also slightly obsessive.

It’s like asking: am I a better person now than I was then? If I change it, can I correct what I was then?There’s a certain kink in that… the need to revisit, to adjust, to not let something settle. Not really ego, more like compulsion. Like I can’t leave it alone.

Both releases challenge the idea of a “finished” record — they feel more like extensions, mutations, alternate realities of Fault Lines rather than a closed chapter. Has your relationship with the concept of an album changed over time? Do you still believe in a definitive version of anything?

These releases allowed me to be creative without committing to a new full-on thing, and to experiment a little bit with doing a more fragmented release. Is that the modern way? Do we still need albums? Do we want that? There are lots of questions going on there. They just gave me time to experiment a little bit, and that’s quite nice. Because they’re not committing to anything, they allow that, and I like that. I’m not sure if I’ll do that again, because I do feel driven to give a full album now, now that I’ve processed a lot of things going on with me and the world.

But they filled the vacuum, and they also created space for me, weirdly enough, at the same time. I’m very thankful for that. It’s a little bit like what happened during COVID, where I was experimenting a lot with instrumental and acoustic stuff, not really committing to anything. I like to do that occasionally, because I feel like I need a break from that cyclic grind of album to album. It’s necessary, because I love to work. I’m a bit of a workaholic, so I’m not going to take huge breaks. But it’s been nice to use them in that way.

You once described some of these tracks as not belonging — not fully part of Fault Lines, but not part of what came next either. Now that they’re out in the world, do they finally feel placed… or do they still carry that sense of displacement and tension?

They’re a real mirror of how I feel right now, which is a certain instability and not really belonging, privately. That definitely influences how I view IAMX and my art and how I relate to the world. There’s a certain turbulence going on, and those tracks just kind of say that. I think they’re going to be out there alone. I don’t think they’re going to belong to anything. And that’s fine. I’m okay with that. A lot of the time I’m writing about my life experience, so if they don’t belong, they don’t belong, like I feel right now. It’s not a “poor me” thing. It’s just what it is. And that will shift, like it always does. Next year it’ll be something else.

This year you’re moving through very different spaces — Thale, Hildesheim, Leipzig, Hamburg, Manchester, London, Leiria, Oberhausen, Berlin — from open-air settings to festivals like Unter dem Himmel, M’era Luna, Extramuralhas, Infest, and UNITY. Different crowds, different energies, less control. Do you adapt to those environments, or do you bring IAMX into them unchanged and let it disrupt whatever’s already there?

I would probably like to think that I’m editing myself to adapt, but if I’m honest, overall it’s very uncompromising. That’s probably why I don’t necessarily like things like festivals. There’s a certain uncomfortable feeling of not belonging to the world. Not just emotionally, but technically as well, there’s a lot of unpredictability with those situations. I like the intimacy and control of smaller venues.

I like to see people’s faces and eyes and read them properly. In a festival situation there’s so much stimulus that it’s difficult to read what’s happening, and that makes me uncomfortable. I like to feel that I’m there for a good reason, that the energy is right and the purpose is right, and that I’m not just trying to convince people what I am. I never really like that feeling of having to prove yourself to thousands of strangers. IAMX feels quite delicate to me. It needs understanding and effort to really see the bigger picture. The live show can do that, it can convince people, but from my internal feeling, it can be uncomfortable.

That said, I do feel oddly up for it right now. That comes in waves. Sometimes I just want to retreat and say “fuck the world,” but right now I feel like I want to approach it and take it as a challenge. Maybe I just need to work harder to get something out of it. So yeah, I’m oddly looking forward to it.

Open Mic: Between UNMASK, IAMIXED, and this intense run of festivals across Europe — what’s something that doesn’t fit into the narrative? Something unresolved, unfinished, or simply too honest for a press release… but still very much part of IAMX right now?

There’s a kind of scattered energy. But at the same time, there’s optimism about the next phase of IAMX and the material. I started writing something recently that didn’t feel like the usual IAMX, and that immediately made me curious. It made me think, where am I going right now? Usually something interesting comes out of turbulent phases, so I’m kind of trusting that. I’m also excited about the collective side of IAMX, helping other artists, and the art retreat I’ve talked about for years. I can actually see a path forward with that now, which feels new.

There are lots of small pieces coming together, and that’s stimulating. But I also tend to work on too many things at once. I’m working on myself, maybe therapeutically, I’m working on land, I’m working in the studio, working on the live shows. It’s a lot. Everything kind of flows in and out of everything else, which makes it difficult to describe. There is a bigger picture, but it’s hard to articulate before it’s finished. You only really understand it once the music is complete. Before that, it’s quite abstract and hard to pin down.

But I can say there are some really interesting things happening, and I’m excited by that. And there are also things coming up… releases and ideas that I think fans will connect with. Some of it is a bit unexpected.

Britta Pirkko
04/05/2026