With several high profile appearances and an upcoming show at ProgDay, Louisville, Kentucky’s very own Isolation Tank Ensemble continues to mesmerize audiences with their hypnotic blend of influences and styles and energetic performances. I was lucky enough to catch them at the Irving Theater in Indianapolis a few years ago, opening for Cheer-Accident and Sleepytime Gorilla Museum. As soon as they emerged with matching white outfits, and as soon as I saw Mateo Barnett holding an electric mandolin, I knew we were going to be treated to something special. Like some desert cult from a deep cave on Arrakis, or a house band from a cantina in Space Quest 2, Isolation Tank Ensemble had me transfixed. I caught up with Mateo Barnett, who answered some questions for us about the band’s past, present, and future. Please check out their new single, “Challenger Deep”, along with their last album, Heliography, and make sure to catch them at ProgDay this weekend!
I first remember hearing about you over 10 years ago- you were playing in a band called Vampire Squid, which disbanded around 2010. What have you been up to artistically in the meantime?
Oh wow, Vampire Squid! Those memories are getting kinda foggy at this point. We went on 2 East Coast tours and 1 West Coast tour. I still keep up with friends I met doing that stuff! A lot of my friends from The Most Amazing Century of Science are still doing stuff in Nashville, and there was an incredible band called the Juan Prophet Organization that I sometimes hear from. David Grollman is a very close friend from New York (formerly part of Prehistoric Horse) and is still doing experimental house shows.
How did Isolation Tank Ensemble come about? How did the current lineup come together?
I was playing with some folks, including Nick (the drummer from Vampire Squid), and that group dispersed for the most part, but Nick and I really liked what we were creating musically so we decided to find new folks. Kirstyn was a facebook find, a friend of a friend that played violin, and I just reached out to her and she took a chance on coming out to jam with 2 strange men she’d never met. After showing up a couple of times, she mentioned that her brother in law played guitar and might be interested in the kind of music she was hearing. Andrew started coming to practices and we had a four piece that we started playing shows with.
After a few shows as a four piece, we were still looking for a bassist and keyboard player so I made a post looking, and Richard reached out. He was an immediate fit and mentioned he knew a synth player, and brought Matt to some practices. Nick broke my heart and moved to Northern KY. We had been to a show the year before he left and saw Lamar playing with a band, and Nick was impressed with his drumming (Nick isn’t often impressed with other drummers). So I asked Lamar to join after Nick left. That’s how we got to here in a very wine-truncated timeline.
Are there any sources of inspiration you’re channeling in your writing?
Oh, absolutely! I don’t think any art is created in a vacuum, and any artist that claims COMPLETE originality outside of other influences needs to stop sniffing their own farts. I have come up with riffs & song ideas while just fiddling around on an acoustic and watching a movie. Different folks have used reality enhancing substances and had some neat songs drop out of the void. Everyone in the band has a lot of varied music tastes that compile into the John Carpenter’s Thing of a band we have going on. I love balkan/klezmer music, proggy weirdo music, hip-hop, straight up metal, straight up experimental/extended technique, and 80s/90s pop. I know folks in the band are into (and this is not an exhaustive list) jazz, free jazz, rap, video game music, movie & tv soundtracks, prog metal, prog jazz fusion, funk, soul, noise rock, noise, djent, ploinky fuzz, jazzsterbation, bleep bloop, & scorn.
The description of your latest album, Heliography, is quite cinematic.
“In an act of cosmic quantum entanglement, the twin suns delivered a heliographic message, flashing two breathing image-beings into existence on opposite sides of the land. One borne unto the Collapsers, immaculate in her conception. The other, angular and noisesome, borne as a scream made manifest unto the Mages. Once again, the world had its two avatars and this is their chronicle. “
It seems to indicate that there is a concept to this record. Is that the case?
Yeah, we tend to communicate song ideas in cinematic thoughts sometimes, and always enjoy sitting down with some chemical enhancements to discuss the storyline for our lyric-less songs. We wrote out an entire storyline for Heliography and it was something that came really naturally. The songs created a desert theme on their own, and we had a fun time putting the story into words. As you can see from the description (that Matt definitely wrote), the way we talk about our songs is cinematic.
Your album art is really gorgeous, and so were the prints sold at the show we saw in Louisville in 2025. Tell us more about Justin Kamerer, AKA Angryblue.
Justin is more of a fae creature than a mortal human. He’s a treacherous goblin that we pay with uncomfortable humor. I’ve had the good fortune to know him and his wife Brittney (also a dope artist) for longer than I can remember not knowing them. I’ve long been a fan of his, but never thought he’d end up being our album artist. Lucky for Iso Tank, his music taste runs pretty parallel to mine, we share a love of weird, obtuse, challenging music. Bands like 16 Horsepower & Om & Sleepytime Gorilla Museum (to name a few of our shared passions). I think it’s very rare and wonderful to have art and music mesh so well, but holding the vinyl cover of Heliography while listening to it, I think this was ALWAYS the art the music shaped, and vice versa. It is a really cool thing to see him scratching around with an idea he’ll send us, and then a month later see it fleshed out in full glory. We don’t really give him direction because we have complete trust in him as an artist.
For our logo and font design, Matt (keys/synths) & I sat down with Justin, a bunch of 70s sci fi novel covers (2 6-packs) and a vinyl copy of H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds. For Heliography, we sent him the tracks as they were in different stages of completion and told him the ridiculous storylines we had written for each ridiculous song, and out came that ridiculously gorgeous album art. We all knew that first album felt like the desert, and he 100% understood the assignment. This next one is so watery we got sea legs working on it.
When you are writing, do the ideas for the story of the album come before the music, or doid they organically develop alongside the compositions?
Storyline follows after the music for sure. We all kinda had little stories in our heads about all the songs, but the stories really locked into place after we finalized the order we wanted them to be on the album. Musically, it made sense, and ridiculously, the dumb little story we had made sense, too.
At this point, I’ve seen you perform twice, both times alongside Sleepytime Gorilla Museum. What has it been like to share the stage and break bread with Sleepytime?
Unreal at first. Humbling, weird, a little nerve wracking. I’ve booked Faun Fables & Rabbit Rabbit Radio for years, so I have developed somewhat of a personal relationship with Carla, Matthias, & Nils, but getting to know Iago & Dan has been a joy. They’re all super kind and supportive, and it now feels like friends we get to share a special connection with of crazy, weird, challenging, progressive music. I think I realized that maybe we might actually belong on stage with them was the crowd response that we, the OPENING opening band got, in front of a Sleepytime Gorilla Museum crowd!
I was not expecting them to come through Louisville on this last run, it wasn’t exactly on their way, and they were on tour with an Ipecac band, Spotlights, but they reached out to us and we made it happen with Billy & Mez from Headliners. That was a crazy email to get.
How is the follow up record going?
Yes! Recording and mixing is through Dead Bird Studio with Dave & Jay there. We haven’t decided where we’ll go for mastering, potentially Chris Kincaid who did our first record, but that boy is BUSY these days, I guess that’s what winning a Grammy gets ya! [Editor’s note: they DID in fact go for Chris Kincaid]. We’re really excited for everyone to hear this next batch of songs. They’re all really strong, and the performances we captured are quite striking. Unlike the first album, this new one is truly a group effort writing wise; almost everyone has at least one song on this album. This means there are a lot of voices that come through, but they all flow together in a really really natural way that we’re super proud of.
We’d like to share “Challenger Deep”, a new song from your upcoming album. Tell us a little bit about how this song came about!
Andrew, our guitar player brought 95% of Challenger Deep to the band and we all loved it & jumped in and turned it into what it became.
We’d love to catch you live this year! I noticed you all were selected to play for ProgDay! Tell us about that and any other opportunity to catch you live.
As of the rest of this year we are just really focused on getting our second album out there. It is recorded and currently being mastered. Third House Communications will be releasing it for us. Hopefully 2027 will see us getting to hit some more states to perform to support the new record.
Catch Isolation Tank Ensemble and many other amazing bands at ProgDay on Labor Day weekend (September 5-6th, 2026) this year!
And check out their website here.
and their Bandcamp page here.
Proglodytes 