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LP
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BKE 023LP
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$31.50
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 2/27/2026
A chance meeting in Mexico City set Points of Inaccessibility into motion. When Ibero-American composer Rafael Anton Irisarri crossed paths with Dutch media artist Jaco Schilp at MUTEK in 2024, a conversation about how technology shapes perception revealed an unexpected common ground. Schilp invited Irisarri to a spring 2025 residency at Uncloud, the Utrecht-based collective he co-founded, where Irisarri's sound began to take form amid an environment shaped by Schilp's visual research. The Uncloud studio was located inside the former Pieter Baan Centre, a forensic psychiatric prison where suspects of violent crimes were once confined. Its long history of silence and containment shaped the atmosphere in which the project developed. Within this setting, Irisarri coaxed long bowed-guitar tones through a network of pedals and looping systems. The raw gestures thickened into a vaporous and architectural field of sound. Schilp processed the material through a custom point-cloud software patch that produced images in continuous flux. The visuals flickered, dissolved and reformed like memories that resist coherence, functioning as a digital Rorschach that reflected the observer's own perception. Amid these spectral echoes, the project evolved into an examination of how the past persists within present signals. Irisarri improvised throughout the residency, generating material that allowed the visuals to develop in parallel. Once back in his New York studio, he began shaping the recordings by carving pathways through the improvisations and mapping selected passages into MIDI. This process allowed him to build outward from the bowed-guitar material with minimal overdubs, adding Prophet 5 textures, Moog bass and strings that expanded the harmonic field while keeping the original performances at the center. To refine the structure, Abul Mogard provided editorial input, working with Irisarri's stems to guide transitions and strengthen the overall pacing. What emerges is a work that examines the tension between technological systems and human presence. Points of Inaccessibility asks whether connection is still possible within environments shaped by mediation and delay, or whether we have become isolated points within the very networks that promise proximity. Points of Inaccessibility is presented on BioVinyl. Mastered by Stephan Mathieu. Artwork by Jaco Schilp. Design and layout by Daniel Castrejón.
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Cassette
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BKE 022CS
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A decade after its release, A Fragile Geography returns transformed. This limited-edition cassette accompanies the AFG10 anniversary reissue, offering an inspired re-envisioning of Rafael Anton Irisarri's landmark compositions. Reworks presents distinctive readings of these pieces, with each artist leaving their personal mark on the material. The titles remain unchanged, with the sole exception of "Hiatus," reborn here as "Ausencia." Together, these reimaginings extend the emotional cartography of the album into new terrains. KMRU reframes "Displacement" with expansive, glimmering layers that open into meditative ambient landscapes. Penelope Trappes renders "Reprisal" as a voice-led invocation of the delicate and the intimate. Her wistful vocals bloom with fragile sorrow, rising over shimmering strands of strings to create a sound world at once sacred and shadowed. Kevin Richard Martin (a.k.a. The Bug) transforms "Empire Systems" into a cavernous "Iced Mix," driven by polyrhythmic double bass motifs and sculpted from subterranean pressure and negative space. On Side B, Mabe Fratti opens with a cinematic, dreamlike, Lynchian reimagining of "Hiatus" in her native Spanish ("Ausencia"). She threads cello and voice so wondrously that her rendering feels at once hauntingly beautiful and disquieting. Abul Mogard stretches "Persistence" into a vast drone elegy. A master of patient sound sculpting, Mogard layers evolving waves of analog synths into a dense shroud that radiates its own internal light. William Basinski and Gary Thomas Wright close the cycle with a spectral version of "Secretly Wishing for Rain." Basinski's field recordings of Reseda rainfall and birdsong, which open and close the rework, add a personal touch and evoke the imagined sound of a grainy film reel flickering to life. A final gesture that dissolves the album into vapor, leaving the listener adrift in its lingering afterglow. Mastered with great care by Stephan Mathieu and featuring a remixed version of the original artwork by Daniel Castrejón, this edition refracts the language of the original through new prisms. Less a return than a passage, across time, across interpretation, into uncharted emotional realms.
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LP
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BKE 021LP
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Rafael Anton Irisarri's landmark work reimagined. Marking the tenth anniversary of the American composer's critically acclaimed album A Fragile Geography, this new edition arrives renewed, both sonically and visually. First released in 2015 during a period of personal upheaval and creative reinvention, it endures as a testament to resilience, transformation, and the connection we hold with the places that shape us. Written in the aftermath of a devastating theft, A Fragile Geography was born out of loss. Just days before a cross-country move to New York, Irisarri's entire Seattle-based studio was wiped out. Instruments. Recordings. Archives. Gone without a trace. He arrived on the East Coast to an empty room and the daunting task of starting over. Composed and recorded in the rural woods of the Hudson Valley, the album took shape in seclusion, surrounded by nature, and through a process guided by improvisation. Embracing limitations, Irisarri wove textural layers of field recordings with half-remembered melodies from his Seattle years, piecing them together like fragments of memory. Among its defining sounds is "Empire Systems," a monumental centerpiece built around a simple four-chord progression, organ textures, and guitar drones. Gradually, the track expands into layers of immersive loops and thick, enveloping distortion that wash over the listener like a rolling wave. More than a career highlight, A Fragile Geography has laid the foundation for Black Knoll studio, which Irisarri rebuilt from the ground up. The studio has since grown into a creative hub for countless projects, with Irisarri engineering records for iconic music figures like Terry Riley, Ryuichi Sakamoto, William Basinski, MONO, Devendra Banhart, Grouper, Emeralds, Steve Hauschildt, Julianna Barwick, and many others. Mastered by Stephan Mathieu with exceptional attention to detail, this anniversary edition uncovers every nuance in the sound design, enhancing clarity and presence. With each listen, new elements emerge, inviting discovery and reconnection.
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BKE 021OR-LP
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Orange color vinyl version. Rafael Anton Irisarri's landmark work reimagined. Marking the tenth anniversary of the American composer's critically acclaimed album A Fragile Geography, this new edition arrives renewed, both sonically and visually. First released in 2015 during a period of personal upheaval and creative reinvention, it endures as a testament to resilience, transformation, and the connection we hold with the places that shape us. Written in the aftermath of a devastating theft, A Fragile Geography was born out of loss. Just days before a cross-country move to New York, Irisarri's entire Seattle-based studio was wiped out. Instruments. Recordings. Archives. Gone without a trace. He arrived on the East Coast to an empty room and the daunting task of starting over. Composed and recorded in the rural woods of the Hudson Valley, the album took shape in seclusion, surrounded by nature, and through a process guided by improvisation. Embracing limitations, Irisarri wove textural layers of field recordings with half-remembered melodies from his Seattle years, piecing them together like fragments of memory. Among its defining sounds is "Empire Systems," a monumental centerpiece built around a simple four-chord progression, organ textures, and guitar drones. Gradually, the track expands into layers of immersive loops and thick, enveloping distortion that wash over the listener like a rolling wave. More than a career highlight, A Fragile Geography has laid the foundation for Black Knoll studio, which Irisarri rebuilt from the ground up. The studio has since grown into a creative hub for countless projects, with Irisarri engineering records for iconic music figures like Terry Riley, Ryuichi Sakamoto, William Basinski, MONO, Devendra Banhart, Grouper, Emeralds, Steve Hauschildt, Julianna Barwick, and many others. Mastered by Stephan Mathieu with exceptional attention to detail, this anniversary edition uncovers every nuance in the sound design, enhancing clarity and presence. With each listen, new elements emerge, inviting discovery and reconnection.
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BKE 021YE-LP
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Yellow color vinyl version. Rafael Anton Irisarri's landmark work reimagined. Marking the tenth anniversary of the American composer's critically acclaimed album A Fragile Geography, this new edition arrives renewed, both sonically and visually. First released in 2015 during a period of personal upheaval and creative reinvention, it endures as a testament to resilience, transformation, and the connection we hold with the places that shape us. Written in the aftermath of a devastating theft, A Fragile Geography was born out of loss. Just days before a cross-country move to New York, Irisarri's entire Seattle-based studio was wiped out. Instruments. Recordings. Archives. Gone without a trace. He arrived on the East Coast to an empty room and the daunting task of starting over. Composed and recorded in the rural woods of the Hudson Valley, the album took shape in seclusion, surrounded by nature, and through a process guided by improvisation. Embracing limitations, Irisarri wove textural layers of field recordings with half-remembered melodies from his Seattle years, piecing them together like fragments of memory. Among its defining sounds is "Empire Systems," a monumental centerpiece built around a simple four-chord progression, organ textures, and guitar drones. Gradually, the track expands into layers of immersive loops and thick, enveloping distortion that wash over the listener like a rolling wave. More than a career highlight, A Fragile Geography has laid the foundation for Black Knoll studio, which Irisarri rebuilt from the ground up. The studio has since grown into a creative hub for countless projects, with Irisarri engineering records for iconic music figures like Terry Riley, Ryuichi Sakamoto, William Basinski, MONO, Devendra Banhart, Grouper, Emeralds, Steve Hauschildt, Julianna Barwick, and many others. Mastered by Stephan Mathieu with exceptional attention to detail, this anniversary edition uncovers every nuance in the sound design, enhancing clarity and presence. With each listen, new elements emerge, inviting discovery and reconnection.
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BKE 019LP
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The seeds of composer Rafael Anton Irisarri's latest LP were first planted during his 2016 tour in Italy, months before that Autumn's unexpected presidential election. The linguistic glitch of an innocuous diner in Milan named "il Mito Americano" -- meant as "The American Dream" but translated literally to English as "The American Myth" -- sparked a series of ideas, both conceptual and musical. Amid the chaos of 2020, while exploring the stark world of brutalist architecture and inspired by the false fronts of Potemkin villages, a vision started to take shape: Façadisms. Composed over three years, it's a late capitalist lament of simmering electric despondency. Irisarri's obsession with repeating motifs mirrors the cyclical nature of a tumultuous political history. The album's eight tracks heave and storm like a tempest being drained of its rage. This is the sound of majestic dissipation, of morning afters, fashioned from a mournful haze with cavernous guitars and granular twilight. A euphony of a receding tide as one sifts through the remnants of what remains: dust, delusion, and memory. Façadisms moves fluidly between moments of absence and abandon. Ashen swaths of electronics billow above smoldering embers of melody, guitar, and scattered streaks of processed strings and voice, as on the rapturous doom of "Control Your Soul's Desire for Freedom," featuring Julia Kent on cello and Hannah Elizabeth Cox on vocals. Co-written with Kenyan sound artist KMRU, "Red Moon Tide" surges from flickering elegy to celestial disquiet, roiling waves of hymnal descent, and bristling noise. The effect is unsettling and unmooring: a soundtrack for the soul leaving the body, only to discover a void. It's the sound of the center not holding, of shared illusions being dissolved in a tunnel of white light. The cover photograph captures a profound sense of desolation. Taken in the historic shanty town of La Perla, Puerto Rico, where Irisarri spent his childhood, brutal colonial mysteries are lost to time. A skeletal concrete structure decays against an expansive blue horizon. Only the shadow of its shell ripples on the empty sea. Has the American myth finally run its course? Also available on blue (BKE 019BL-LP) and clear vinyl (BKE 019PE-LP).
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LP
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BKE 019BL-LP
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Blue color vinyl version. The seeds of composer Rafael Anton Irisarri's latest LP were first planted during his 2016 tour in Italy, months before that Autumn's unexpected presidential election. The linguistic glitch of an innocuous diner in Milan named "il Mito Americano" -- meant as "The American Dream" but translated literally to English as "The American Myth" -- sparked a series of ideas, both conceptual and musical. Amid the chaos of 2020, while exploring the stark world of brutalist architecture and inspired by the false fronts of Potemkin villages, a vision started to take shape: Façadisms. Composed over three years, it's a late capitalist lament of simmering electric despondency. Irisarri's obsession with repeating motifs mirrors the cyclical nature of a tumultuous political history. The album's eight tracks heave and storm like a tempest being drained of its rage. This is the sound of majestic dissipation, of morning afters, fashioned from a mournful haze with cavernous guitars and granular twilight. A euphony of a receding tide as one sifts through the remnants of what remains: dust, delusion, and memory. Façadisms moves fluidly between moments of absence and abandon. Ashen swaths of electronics billow above smoldering embers of melody, guitar, and scattered streaks of processed strings and voice, as on the rapturous doom of "Control Your Soul's Desire for Freedom," featuring Julia Kent on cello and Hannah Elizabeth Cox on vocals. Co-written with Kenyan sound artist KMRU, "Red Moon Tide" surges from flickering elegy to celestial disquiet, roiling waves of hymnal descent, and bristling noise. The effect is unsettling and unmooring: a soundtrack for the soul leaving the body, only to discover a void. It's the sound of the center not holding, of shared illusions being dissolved in a tunnel of white light. The cover photograph captures a profound sense of desolation. Taken in the historic shanty town of La Perla, Puerto Rico, where Irisarri spent his childhood, brutal colonial mysteries are lost to time. A skeletal concrete structure decays against an expansive blue horizon. Only the shadow of its shell ripples on the empty sea. Has the American myth finally run its course? Also available on black (BKE 019LP) and clear vinyl (BKE 019PE-LP).
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BKE 019PE-LP
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Clear petrol color vinyl version. The seeds of composer Rafael Anton Irisarri's latest LP were first planted during his 2016 tour in Italy, months before that Autumn's unexpected presidential election. The linguistic glitch of an innocuous diner in Milan named "il Mito Americano" -- meant as "The American Dream" but translated literally to English as "The American Myth" -- sparked a series of ideas, both conceptual and musical. Amid the chaos of 2020, while exploring the stark world of brutalist architecture and inspired by the false fronts of Potemkin villages, a vision started to take shape: Façadisms. Composed over three years, it's a late capitalist lament of simmering electric despondency. Irisarri's obsession with repeating motifs mirrors the cyclical nature of a tumultuous political history. The album's eight tracks heave and storm like a tempest being drained of its rage. This is the sound of majestic dissipation, of morning afters, fashioned from a mournful haze with cavernous guitars and granular twilight. A euphony of a receding tide as one sifts through the remnants of what remains: dust, delusion, and memory. Façadisms moves fluidly between moments of absence and abandon. Ashen swaths of electronics billow above smoldering embers of melody, guitar, and scattered streaks of processed strings and voice, as on the rapturous doom of "Control Your Soul's Desire for Freedom," featuring Julia Kent on cello and Hannah Elizabeth Cox on vocals. Co-written with Kenyan sound artist KMRU, "Red Moon Tide" surges from flickering elegy to celestial disquiet, roiling waves of hymnal descent, and bristling noise. The effect is unsettling and unmooring: a soundtrack for the soul leaving the body, only to discover a void. It's the sound of the center not holding, of shared illusions being dissolved in a tunnel of white light. The cover photograph captures a profound sense of desolation. Taken in the historic shanty town of La Perla, Puerto Rico, where Irisarri spent his childhood, brutal colonial mysteries are lost to time. A skeletal concrete structure decays against an expansive blue horizon. Only the shadow of its shell ripples on the empty sea. Has the American myth finally run its course? Also available on black (BKE 019LP) and blue vinyl (BKE 019BL-LP).
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LP
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BKE 007LP
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Longtime enthusiasts of ambient music have much to celebrate as Rafael Anton Irisarri's cherished out-of-print cassette, Midnight Colours, returns in a meticulously remastered edition and makes its inaugural debut on vinyl. The significance of this album's announcement is accentuated by its historical resonance, coinciding with the same day in 1952 when the world bore witness to the first-ever test of the hydrogen bomb. Midnight Colours is far more than a mere album; it's an exploration of the enigmatic relationship between humanity and time. Conceived as a sonic interpretation of the Doomsday Clock, which symbolizes the world's existential vulnerabilities, Irisarri's work beckons listeners to contemplate the gravity of our existence and the delicate balance that envelops it. Known for his contributions to the ambient and electronic music genres, Irisarri often explores themes of introspection, nostalgia, and the interplay between sound and emotion. Recorded in 2017, when the Clock was at two-and-a-half minutes-to-midnight (and at the time, the second-closest to midnight since the Clock's inception in 1947), Midnight Colours permeates with the melancholy of memories resurfacing as one approaches the end of life: the regrets, the closure, the uncertainties, the anxieties. Originally released as a limited tape on the beloved Atlanta-based label Geographic North, Midnight Colours swiftly garnered praise and acclaim within the ambient music sphere. Now, with this newly remastered edition on his own Black Knoll imprint, fans, both longstanding and newfound, can rediscover the album's captivating beauty in unprecedented clarity and depth. The reissue of Midnight Colours features band-new artwork and design by the renowned Mexican visual artist Daniel Castrejón. A frequent collaborator and friend of Irisarri, Castrejón's imagery impeccably complements the album's mood and themes, extending a compelling invitation for listeners to explore its aural world visually. This landmark release serves as a testament not only to Irisarri's enduring impact on the ambient music genre but also as a long-awaited gift to those who have patiently anticipated the album's vinyl debut.
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LP
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BKE 007GR-LP
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Green color vinyl version. Longtime enthusiasts of ambient music have much to celebrate as Rafael Anton Irisarri's cherished out-of-print cassette, Midnight Colours, returns in a meticulously remastered edition and makes its inaugural debut on vinyl. The significance of this album's announcement is accentuated by its historical resonance, coinciding with the same day in 1952 when the world bore witness to the first-ever test of the hydrogen bomb. Midnight Colours is far more than a mere album; it's an exploration of the enigmatic relationship between humanity and time. Conceived as a sonic interpretation of the Doomsday Clock, which symbolizes the world's existential vulnerabilities, Irisarri's work beckons listeners to contemplate the gravity of our existence and the delicate balance that envelops it. Known for his contributions to the ambient and electronic music genres, Irisarri often explores themes of introspection, nostalgia, and the interplay between sound and emotion. Recorded in 2017, when the Clock was at two-and-a-half minutes-to-midnight (and at the time, the second-closest to midnight since the Clock's inception in 1947), Midnight Colours permeates with the melancholy of memories resurfacing as one approaches the end of life: the regrets, the closure, the uncertainties, the anxieties. Originally released as a limited tape on the beloved Atlanta-based label Geographic North, Midnight Colours swiftly garnered praise and acclaim within the ambient music sphere. Now, with this newly remastered edition on his own Black Knoll imprint, fans, both longstanding and newfound, can rediscover the album's captivating beauty in unprecedented clarity and depth. The reissue of Midnight Colours features band-new artwork and design by the renowned Mexican visual artist Daniel Castrejón. A frequent collaborator and friend of Irisarri, Castrejón's imagery impeccably complements the album's mood and themes, extending a compelling invitation for listeners to explore its aural world visually. This landmark release serves as a testament not only to Irisarri's enduring impact on the ambient music genre but also as a long-awaited gift to those who have patiently anticipated the album's vinyl debut.
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BKE 007MA-LP
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Magenta color vinyl version. Longtime enthusiasts of ambient music have much to celebrate as Rafael Anton Irisarri's cherished out-of-print cassette, Midnight Colours, returns in a meticulously remastered edition and makes its inaugural debut on vinyl. The significance of this album's announcement is accentuated by its historical resonance, coinciding with the same day in 1952 when the world bore witness to the first-ever test of the hydrogen bomb. Midnight Colours is far more than a mere album; it's an exploration of the enigmatic relationship between humanity and time. Conceived as a sonic interpretation of the Doomsday Clock, which symbolizes the world's existential vulnerabilities, Irisarri's work beckons listeners to contemplate the gravity of our existence and the delicate balance that envelops it. Known for his contributions to the ambient and electronic music genres, Irisarri often explores themes of introspection, nostalgia, and the interplay between sound and emotion. Recorded in 2017, when the Clock was at two-and-a-half minutes-to-midnight (and at the time, the second-closest to midnight since the Clock's inception in 1947), Midnight Colours permeates with the melancholy of memories resurfacing as one approaches the end of life: the regrets, the closure, the uncertainties, the anxieties. Originally released as a limited tape on the beloved Atlanta-based label Geographic North, Midnight Colours swiftly garnered praise and acclaim within the ambient music sphere. Now, with this newly remastered edition on his own Black Knoll imprint, fans, both longstanding and newfound, can rediscover the album's captivating beauty in unprecedented clarity and depth. The reissue of Midnight Colours features band-new artwork and design by the renowned Mexican visual artist Daniel Castrejón. A frequent collaborator and friend of Irisarri, Castrejón's imagery impeccably complements the album's mood and themes, extending a compelling invitation for listeners to explore its aural world visually. This landmark release serves as a testament not only to Irisarri's enduring impact on the ambient music genre but also as a long-awaited gift to those who have patiently anticipated the album's vinyl debut.
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RM 4158LP
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Rafael Anton Irisarri's works from Room40 have always dwelled in a place of pressure. His low frequency excursions have charted out a unique voyage into a territory in which texture and density are equally matched to create a visceral, but ultimately comforting zone of entanglement. At the same time as completing his Solastalgia edition (RM 4105LP), Irisarri recorded Agitas Al Sol. Like its sibling work, this album is an enveloping sonic drift that traces across the unsteady topographies of the Anthropocene. It moves in deep exhales, drawing from within and pressing outward into a sound vista that is effortlessly deep.
From Rafael Anton Irisarri: "It's sometimes hard to go back and speak to work that was made in the past. Things change, but they also stay the same in some ways. I feel this strongly coming back to these pieces. Agitas Al So was a companion suite of materials that was composed alongside my album Solastalgia. For those with a keen eye for wordplay, they might notice each title is an anagram of the other. In some respects, this is actually a very fitting sonic analogy too for the pieces from the two records. They mirror each other in various ways, harmonically in the very least, but they also share the same deep sense of pressure that forged them so acutely. To come back to these pieces, I was struck by how much they expand on the ideas contained in Solastalgia. Where as Solastalgia might have been me breathing in, this set of pieces is a deep, deep exhale. Remember to breath."
Rafael Anton Irisarri is a composer, record producer, and mastering engineer living in New York. Irisarri's compositions field an array of modern ambient overtones threaded through oceanic symphonies with tape loops, bowed electric guitar and vast washes of overdriven sound. His most recent album for dais records, peripeteia, portray these common themes giving way to metal and classical influences that emphasizes Irisarri's melancholic tendencies. These unique overtures, coupled with his signature layering of distortion and bleached-out textures, fabricate an audible environment that would seemingly be at odds with, yet gracefully complement each other.
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UR 100LP
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2021 clear vinyl repress with new cover art; originally released in 2017. Post-minimalist American composer Rafael Anton Irisarri's Umor Rex debut. Inspired by a troubled socio-political climate, buried melodies punch their way through a bleak cover of noisy drones, periodically veering into some of Irisarri's most eerily pertinent music to date. One of Rafael Anton Irisarri's most thematically and sonically cohesive records to date The Shameless Years came together in a relatively short burst of creativity starting at the end of 2016. Rediscovering some relatively older tools -- namely Native Instruments' Reaktor, Absynth, and Kontakt software -- Irisarri combined them with his collection of guitars, pedals, amps, and analogue processing gear, turning his Black Knoll Studio north of NYC into a powerful writing tool. Completed quickly by Irisarri's standards, let alone during a period of social upheaval in American society, the record faces down several key personal themes. Two tracks were completely remotely between Irisarri in New York and Umor Rex veteran Siavash Amini from his home in Tehran, Iran. This music came together at the peak of all the anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant rhetoric happening in the USA, not to mention the banning of Iranians from entering the country, explains Irisarri. The diptych with Amini, "Karma Krama" and "The Faithless", seems bathed in additional waves of sorrow and dread. The wash of symphonic storm clouds of synth drones and processed notes on the latter gradually appears and disappears over the course of thirteen mournful minutes. "Rh Negative" marches gigantic guitars through towering valleys of scarred ambient noise dealing with Irisarri's own heritage, many of his ancestors having come to America to escape poverty and oppression. The refusal of modern America to extend similar sanctuary to refugees escaping turmoil weighs heavily on the composer. Elsewhere an emotional onslaught of notes buried in mounds of greyscale noise on "Sky Burial" aims to deal with Irisarri's very own mortality -- something he was recently confronted with following health scares, an accident, and a near-death experience in 2016. Pushing 40 as this album was being made, the composer is constantly aware that he's already outlived his own father, who died at the age of 32. Facing down both intolerance and the void, the epic soundscapes of The Shameless Years are a vast cry of emotion from Irisarri. Mastered by James Plotkin. Includes download code.
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RM 438LP
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Room40 present a reissue of Rafael Anton Irisarri's The North Bend, originally released 2010. From Rafael: "The North Bend is about the Pacific Northwest region of the USA, where I lived at the time the album was made. Still, today I consider that region my spiritual home, even though I am now living on the East Coast. I had met Lawrence English in Poland back in 2009 and he kindly invited me to make a record for the label. I was a fan of his releases so this was really an obvious thing for me to say 'yes' to and a chance to create something special. I had released a few EPs and an LP under my name, all influenced by the so-called 'modern classical' ambient style pioneered by the late great Jóhann Jóhannsson and minimalist composers like Harold Budd and Arvo Pärt. The North Bend is the first work that dealt with 'place' and explored a locality, the first in a series of recordings all released with Room40. Since this album came out, I've left the Pacific Northwest for another location, New York state, which couldn't be a starker contrast from the life in the PacNW. I had to start from scratch here in NY, as everything I owned until age 36 was stolen the night before I left to drive to NY. It was both a curse and a blessing. Not having the baggage & pitfalls of old ideas was wonderful, but also losing all the recorded & written works I had was harrowing at the time. Remastering The North Bend seemed like a natural thing for me. Not so much as revisionist history, but rather thinking how to make a record sound in a certain way without being able to revisit any of the mixes. In other words, the creative choices I made at the time (2010) are 100% preserved, there wasn't any opportunity to revisit those, but rather make the record sound as good as I can framed through hindsight and a decade of separation from the period it was created."
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RM 4105LP
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"We find ourselves increasingly in a swell of solastalgia, which is not a new phenomenon; it has haunted us over the centuries. Change has never been humanity's strong suit, but it has been our shadow; it's here, at this fractious nexus of unpredictability that Rafael Anton Irisarri has created his latest work, Solastalgia. Building on the echoes of landscape that guided his previous Room40 editions, Solastalgia imagines that which is not yet known. Utilizing a range of unexpected variables, automations and uncontrolled systems in the creation of the recordings, Irisarri has developed a new approach to his work, seamlessly weaving together intense layers of texture and saturated harmony. Within these works, distant melodies emerge and in their wake the listeners' focus shifts again and again. A never-ending loop of the unconscious feeding into the conscious is formed. Whilst the skeletal form of pieces such as "Coastal Trapped Disturbance" might remain, the organic matter that is the body of the music is in a process of persistent transformation. These subconscious variations morph the pieces from within. This is a record of sublimation, and dwells in states of transition and becoming. Recorded in two suites, each section is a distorted mirror reflection of the other. Solastalgia stands as a landmark undertaking for Irisarri, it encourages us to remain unsettled and attentive in the moment, and prompts us to listen deeper and imagine what lies beyond or in excess of our expectations." Written and produced by Rafael Anton Irisarri in New York, USA during Autumn 2018.
Rafael Anton Irisarri is an American composer, multi-instrumentalist, and record producer living in New York. Described as one of contemporary ambient music's most celebrated practitioners, Irisarri's music often has a mournful, elegiac quality where ostinato phrases tap into minimalist ideals while atmospheric layers of effects suggest a more cinematic approach. In all, his compositions are deeply emotive and epic, like a symphony recording that's been rescued from attic entombment after half a century. Irisarri concerts at museums, churches, synagogues, and other non-traditional performance spaces explore the physicality of sound. Combining an array of heavy metal bass amplifiers, multiple loudspeaker configurations, synthesizers, bowed guitars, notebook computers, video images, and lighting, Irisarri decontextualizes the audience's relationship to the venue, creating an immersive, otherworldly environment. Irisarri's recorded works are widely published internationally.
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