Photo by Nikita Grushevskiy
RAFAEL ANTON IRISARRI is a record producer and mastering engineer living in New York.
Over the years, the American composer has become ubiquitous within the spheres of ambient, drone and electronic music. Whether it’s through Irisarri’s celestial long-form albums or his lauded audio engineering credentials for countless artists and labels, Irisarri’s consistent dedication to his craft never wavers from the forefront. While Irisarri’s compositions typically field an array of modern ambient overtones threaded through oceanic symphonies with tape loops, bowed electric guitar and vast washes of overdriven sound, his recent debut 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.
Irisarri is a prolific audio engineer and collaborator, having worked with dozens of seminal artists at his Black Knoll Studio in New York. Credits include: Julianna Barwick, Grouper, Steve Hauschildt, Loscil, Telefon Tel Aviv, and Tycho, amongst hundreds of others.
In 2015, Irisarri was tasked by Portland’s Beacon Sound to remaster for vinyl two of legendary minimalist composer Terry Riley classic albums “Descending Moonshine Dervishes” (1982) and “Songs for the Ten Voices of the Two Prophets” (1983).
In 2016, he engineered Oscar-winning composer Ryuichi Sakamoto’s ‘Glass’ album, a collaboration between the esteemed Japanese maestro and influential German sound artist Alva Noto. It was recorded on location at Philip Johnson’s iconic The Glass House in Connecticut and released in 2018 to much critical praise.
In 2019, Irisarri mastered ambient artist Eluvium’s “Pianoworks” for Temporary Residence. The album debuted simultaneously at #1 on the Billboard Classical and Billboard New Age.
Starting his career out in Seattle during the early 00's, Irisarri quickly became an integral part of the Seattle music community while organizing electronic music shows and experiential performances at concert halls, churches, and DIY art spaces. Throughout the mid-00's, he worked as a curator for Seattle's legendary Decibel Festival, focusing on the ambient, leftfield techno and experimental curatorial.
As the new decade rolled in, Irisarri started in 2011 his own music festival, Substrata – the first event of its kind in North America. Held at a converted chapel in a quiet residential neighborhood, the critically-aclaimed intimate event was responsible for breaking in the Pacific Northwest new artists working in the modern classical field (Nils Frahm, Jacaszek, Christina Vantzou, to name a few), and bringing to American shores influential artists, such as the late Mika Vainio and Artic ambient pioneer Biosphere. Substrata ran for five sold-out editions in Seattle, plus an offshoot event at London's Cafe OTO (2014). The festival is currently on an extended hiatus.
Irisarri live at Festiwal Ambientalny in Poland (2016). Photo by Alex Leonard.