Rafael Anton Irisarri
Sirimiri

2018 may (or is already "de facto") be the year of consecration for multi-instrumentalist and composer Rafael Anton Irisarri. Less than a month after the release of the dystopian and dramatic (almost melancholic, like the portrait of a man standing before the great abyss that is life, or in a broader sense, the fate of humanity) "Midnight Colours" on Geographic North, the New York City-based producer renews his partnership with the Mexican label Umor Rex Records after "The Shameless Years" (2017), a project born in 2006 and distributed in collaboration with Thrill Jockey Records and Morr Music.

The album is titled "Sirimiri" (a Basque word meaning "drizzle") and was completely written, produced, mixed, and mastered by Rafael Anton Irisarri at Black Knoll Studios in New York. Unlike the almost "pointillist" nature of "Midnight Colours," "Sirimiri" presents itself as an imposing ambient music work in the style most typical of Brian Eno (take, for example, among his more recent works, "The Ship" from 2016) and without neglecting the emotional component, it assumes a sculptural yet flexible quality in an attempt to give form and dimension to life's manifestations as a whole. Probably for this reason, the album's four compositions have that characteristic repetitive trait, but each time we can discern different nuances, just as our seemingly gray and useless daily life is instead rich in features and events that we do not always recognize: we are lost in the fog of our unconsciousness and are unaware of how everything around us continually changes.

Conceived to be listened to in a loop, the digital "release" features, in addition to the four tracks (recorded with the collaboration of Taylor Jordan in "Mountain Strem" and Rafael Carl Hultgren in "Sonder"), a "Sirimiri Continuous Mix" version (also available for streaming on the Umor Rex Bandcamp page) that allows you to directly experience the overall 35-36 minutes as the author envisioned and realized it. Apparently more "monolithic" than "Midnight Colours," "Sirimiri" is a complex and perhaps more difficult work of music compared to the previous one, but no less effective when you manage literally to sculpt its marble surface and reach the heart of its content, which is literally pulsating with life.