RAFAEL ANTON IRISARRI: The North Bend (Room40)

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Posted on Oct 29th 2010 01:25 am

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Rafael Anton Irisarri: The North Bend

RAFAEL ANTON IRISARRI
The North Bend
RM438
Room40 2010
05 Tracks. 40mins37secs

Amazon UK: CD US: CD | LP Boomkat: CD | LP

The year is proving one of the strongest yet for Australian imprint Room40, which, not content of celebrating ten years at the forefront of experimental music, culminating with a series of concerts during their annual OpenFrame events in Brisbane earlier this month and London at the end of next week, and a stunning retrospective CD given away free to subscribers of The Wire recently, have also seen some of their strongest releases to date come out this years.

One such release is Rafael Anton Irisarri’s latest opus, The North Bend, the follow up to his Reverie mini album, published on Chicago-based Immune earlier in the year. Counting five compositions, and spanning just over fourth minutes, this new album is a much hazier and clouded affair than its predecessors, as the subtle piano motifs that found their way through Irisarri’s debut, Daydreaming (Miasmah) and Reverie are shrouded in dense layers of freezing fog, appearing now only as vague shapes, if at all distinguishable. In fact, the textures used here are much closer to those Irisarri has been experimenting with as The Sight Below, but while much of the work published under that banner is ultimately beat driven, the five tracks collected here are entirely beat-less and ethereal, feeding on something much more primal and cinematic. What Irisarri has retained from The Sight Below is the hypnotic nature of the vast soundscapes used. Irisarri builds each piece from a slow recurring core theme, and expands outwardly from there. The process is the same all the way through, and the soundscapes remain very consistent from start to finish, creating a single powerful narrative.

There is something very pastoral and ecumenical about this record, as echoes of acoustic guitars and piano motifs are superimposed on sweeping orchestral loops, relentlessly ebbing and flowing  over the course of each track, from the autumnal opening piece, Passage, a piece that remains somewhat modest and fairly minimal compared to the rest of the record, and epic moments Blue Tomorrows or Traces, each continuously gaining momentum through their respective course, to the much more contrasted terrains of A Great Northern Sigh, which opens with heavily filtered reversed field recordings and ends with vast orchestral swirls, and closing piece Deception Falls, which progresses through three very distinct stages, the first defined by statics and crackles placed over a minimal melody, progressively supplanted by a second, richer, set of slow synthetic waves, itself overridden by the last, once again clustered around vast sound waves, but comparatively less expensive.

The North Bend represents a shift in Rafael Anton Irisarri’s work, seemingly bringing closer his various entities, yet actually taking a different path altogether. The delicate motifs, minimalist melodies and textured found sounds of earlier recordings are still present here, but set against much more ambitious and rich soundscapes, they at times become almost anecdotal. Here, Irisarri contemplates incredibly cinematic and ambitious musical forms, which may not have the exquisite touch of his more delicate work, but prove equally as absorbing.

4.6/5

RAFAEL ANTON IRISARRI – Blue Tomorrows by ROOM40

Rafael Anton Irisarri | Rafael Anton Irisarri (MySpace) | Room40
Amazon UK: CD US: CD | LP Boomkat: CD | LP

Rafael Anton Irisarri: The North Bend

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