Monday 16 September 2019, 7.30pm
Rafael Anton Irisarri is an American composer, multi-instrumentalist, and record producer living in New York. Described by the press 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 suggests 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.
“Sensual, propulsive, and shrouded in mercurial darkness...irisarri’s ability to make evocative music is both a gift and a learned skill.” – Popmatter
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 decontextualize the audience’s relationship to the venue, creating an immersive, otherworldly environment.
Irisarri’s recorded works are widely published internationally, made available through Ghostly (USA), Morr Music (DE), Room40 (AU), and Umor Rex (MX), among dozen others.
Simon Scott is a sound ecologist from England. His albums ‘Soundings’ (Touch), ‘Insomni’ (Ash International) and ‘Below Sea Level’ (12k) explore the creative process of actively listening, the implications of recording the natural world using technology and the manipulation of natural sounds used for musical composition (Field Recording).
He plays the drums in UK band Slowdive, runs his SPS mastering studio from his Cambridge home and has also collaborated with artists Fennesz, Philip Jeck and Clair M Singer (Spire), Taylor Deupree and Marcus Fischer (Between), The Sight Below, Mike Weis, Nils Frahm and James Blackshaw.