The DUSK Issue: Insula Iscariot
Words & Photos by Aideen Gabbai
Insula Iscariot’s music is a tribute to the power of darkness and uncertainty. Within the Madison scene, filled mostly with more traditional rock acts, Iscariot’s music stands out, with vocals that oscillate between murmurs and screams and a sound that is evolving to dark and complex places. They project an air of mystery and intrigue online, hiding their face in photos and using art to create visuals for their new singles, hyping up releases with cryptic messages and backwards letters.
Iscariot makes music in a genre they call “anemic industrial,” the name taken from a tweet their friend made. They said, “Someone made fun of him for being ‘jock industrial,’ and he was like yeah ‘we’re jock industrial, we mess around here, take your ass back to anemic industrial’ and I thought that actually sounded sick as hell.”
They played around with making tracks and “sound experiments” in high school, but they never thought about music as something they could actually do. The first time Iscariot started thinking seriously about music as a path was when they went to Portland, Oregon, to make merch for King Yosef. They mentioned their music a couple times to the artist, and eventually, he asked them to make a track for something he was putting together for his record label. They played their first gig while they were in Portland, but eventually were drawn back to Madison.
When I meet them, I’m struck by how shy and mild-mannered they are. When I ask them what making their music does for them as an artist, they said, “[The music] was a way of proving myself, because I’ve always been very introverted and quiet and worried about stuff, to prove to myself I can do things and go out in the world.” They also said that their music allows them to create a channel “where feelings become a real thing where I can put them into something instead of something to just mull over.”
Music, and art in general, has always been a way for artists to share what is usually a hidden part of themselves, and allows other people to access that feeling too. “I hope [listeners] can make those connections so other people can feel the same way and it’s not so abstract,” they said.
They go on to talk about how strange it felt when they first began to perform for people and how that shaped their approach to their music. “It was really weird, because I never thought about what other people would think about it, but now when I’m writing a song, I’m thinking about how it will sound in performance, what people are going to think about it.”
“I got Iscariot originally from a Smashing Pumpkins album, Pisces Iscariot, I just thought it sounded cool then I learned it was that person from the Bible,” they said. Insula, on the other hand, is the name of a section of the brain. “It has a lot to do with your consciousness and your personality,” they explain, “but it’s also super unresearched compared to other parts of the brain.” They found the name on an internet deep dive, and liked the phonics of Insula with Iscariot, and thus, their name was born.
The scientific brain term and Biblical name create a fusion that highlights the autonomy Iscariot wants to have with their project, claiming both religion and the subconscious for themself. “The way it comes together for me is, taking that religious aspect and making it really internal and your own, making a religion, believing in yourself, projecting yourself to something that you can strive for.”
Their recent single, “Spilling,” continues with and melds those religious and motivational ideas. Iscariot tells me that the inspiration behind the song is the ancient Roman celebration Agonalia, an obscure pagan tradition. The Romans would celebrate it at the beginning of the military campaigning and agricultural seasons with an animal sacrifice to the gods. “It was a new year’s ritual, trying to get rid of the old and bringing the new to the world and all that, and I wanted to do that for myself after a year where I wasn’t extremely active,” they explain.
The song has this amazing opening where the tension is constantly building, and suddenly, everything cuts out for a second, like letting the line go slack, before plunging right back in.
When you listen to their music, you’re pulled into a world where anger and fear bubble up under the surface, and all of these emotions you hide in the dark of the night start to emerge. The way Iscariot masterfully layers and builds their tracks creates an intense atmosphere that envelops the listener. Neither the vocals nor the instrumentals have the spotlight, instead creating a junction where they come together, blurred enough by each other to create a nightmare. Insula Iscariot’s music delves into the feelings that others are hesitant to touch. They embrace the uncertainty and fear of the void, living in it.
