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Format: LP Label & Cat.Number: Black Knolll BKE019-LP-B Release Year: 2024 Note: "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." - bio vinyl, coloured
Price (incl. 19% VAT): €29.50 More InfoThe 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 our 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. Opening with the somber gauze of “Broken Intensification," 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. "The impoverished peoples of the Americas have known all along that 'freedom' is a cruel illusion crafted by the elites, akin to Potemkin's fake villages designed to impress Catherine the Great," Irisarri indicates. "FAÇADISMS illustrates a twisted inversion where the rulers deceive their subjects with illusions of safety, democracy, and free speech to create a grotesque mirage of control over their own lives.” Elsewhere, Irisarri leans into passages of hushed oblivion (“Hollow,” “Dispersion of Belief”), while ragged drones rumble and disintegrate into wind-battered ambient wreckage. One has the sense that it’s all too late. The hour of fury has passed. The beauty has come and gone. Irisarri’s muse has become the crack in the façade of the unraveling myth. The record closes with a climax of grand departure. 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? credits released November 8, 2024 All tracks composed, produced and performed by Rafael Anton Irisarri, except “Red Moon Tide” composed by Joseph Kamaru Mwangi and Rafael Anton Irisarri. James Brown - Strategies (against conformity) Hannah Elizabeth Cox - Vocals on “Control Your Soul’s Desire for Freedom” Rafael Anton Irisarri - Electric guitars, effects and treatments, field recordings, Max, and synthesizers T. R Jordan - String arrangements and sequencing on “Forever Ago is Now” Julia Kent - Cello on “Control Your Soul’s Desire for Freedom” KMRU - Field recordings, Lyra 8 on “Red Moon Tide” Yamila - Vocals on “Red Moon Tide” Recorded in Berlin, Boston, Brussels, Nairobi, New York, and Oxford. Mixed at Black Knoll (NY) Mastered by Stephan Mathieu Lacquer cut at Schallplatten Schneid Technik (DE) Pressed on BioVinyl at Optimal (DE) Artwork and layout - Daniel Castrejón Cover photograph - Nathaniel Young Legal – Matt Cuttler, Esq Published by Mute Song Made in Germany ©℗ Black Knoll Editions BKE019 MMXXIV All Right Reserved https://irisarri.bandcamp.com/album/fa-adisms |
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