The Sight Below Interview

Rafael Anton Irisarri is an outstanding neo-classical composer. Working on textured sound for over half a decade, the Seattle based multi-instrumentalist turns ambient music into a landscape holding 4/4 beats, deep guitar drones, articulated silences and remarkable atmospheric layers of reverb in such harmony that it is almost impossible not to get hypnotized by its deep sense of haunting beauty. The music speaks through your headphones on a long walk at night, perhaps something you might consider doing having read this.... go on.

What were your first steps in music?

I started to play guitar and bass in punk bands when I was in high school. It kind of took off from there. I was very much into Shoegaze, punk and post-punk back then and still listen to it on a regular basis today.

Which aspects of your profession career have you most enjoyed so far?

Being able to travel and play music in front of strangers, going to places I never imagined I'd visit or hearing a language I would only hear in movies. That is one of the most rewarding aspects of what I do for a living.

"Lonely is the new dance party" stands on your pages online. Tell us about it.

Jakub (from Ghostly) coined the phrase after hearing “Life's Fading Light” for the first time and trying to describe the music to a friend. It kind of hit a note with me, so I've used it ever since.

You'll be releasing new material on Ghostly, what can we expect from it, how was the creation process?

Yes, I'm planning on releasing another album. It's a work in progress but it'll be a different approach. Influenced in part by much of the touring and live performance experiences from the past 2 years. I believe in evolution, and as an artist, you should constantly be in a state of flux. Revolution needs to be permanent. I love taking risks and just doing things that career-wise are suicidal. It keeps challenging me and keeps me interested in making records. Doing the same album over again would be really boring to me.

You are still recording your works live, right?

More or less. I try to but also have started to multitrack more often, giving me more flexibility. One problem I encountered with the first album being all recorded live was I didn't have separate parts (or 'stems” as they are called) to give to people remixing the tracks. This was a big issue actually, and missed out on a few good remixes because of it. That said, I try to keep things as lively as possible, not editing too much, so it's very similar to the way I perform live. It creates discipline and also makes you better at improvisation, which is the basis of my live performances and compositions.

Tell us about your relationship with the label, how did it start?

I knew Sam (Ghostly's curator) for a while and in 2007 he asked me for a demo. Nothing formal, more like a “what are you up to lately?” kind of thing. I sent him a few tracks of what would become The Sight Below. He really liked the material, so it all grew from there. I love working with Ghostly, they are good people and have been very supportive of what I do.

Which kind of experiences did you have while playing big dance festivals compared to other audiences like museums or art events?

I personally prefer playing to a small, focused audiences at theaters, galleries or museums, as opposed to let's say a 25,000 people big summer music festival with big names/big acts on the bill. Less is more – I appreciate meaningful interactions with my listeners and enjoy meeting everyone and hearing their stories. Dance music tends to only be appreciated in clubs on a very superficial level.

I was just about to ask you about your gigs in USA, and found out that there was an incident in Portland?

Gigs in the US are very strange... almost bordering the surreal, sometimes it seems as though you are in an Almodovar movie. The big clubs are run as quasi-criminal enterprises, with all the big agents constantly selling and pushing shows for the masses, so there's no way an independent artist like myself will get booked. Well, unless you open for shit like Trentemøller (which I'm actually doing next week). What can I say, I have to pay bills too, I don't have a dayjob or any other source of income. On the other hand, I'm quite aware of this and have quite the nihilistic attitude – my set for the show consist of 30 minutes of a 40hz drone, along with guitar noises – I will not compromise for the sake of money or reaching a larger audience. If you were not listening already, I don't want you listening cause you saw me open a big show. I doubt the promoters will keep me on for the full set anyway and more than likely I'll be shutdown. But I don't care. I like to push buttons and in order “for everything to be consummated, for me to feel less alone, I had only to wish that there be a large crowd of spectators the day of my execution and that they greet me with cries of hate.” I guess it's why most promoters or agents are afraid of booking me.

Portland: I was playing an all ambient/drone set with Simon Scott. It was our first show together in the US and we had a great time. Unfortunately, the art gallery we played at received a noise complaint and the cops came in and shutdown our show. It was the most ridiculous thing ever. First ambient/drone show shutdown by the police. I guess stranger things have happened...

Where have you most enjoyed playing live so far?

I had some really fantastic experiences playing in Italy, and have enjoyed performing in Jerusalem. I also had an amazing tie in Australia last year, really fantastic place! I would hope to come back to Spain soon, as I love to visit and haven't been since 2009.

Photo: Masiar Pasquali

Congratulations on the awesome work in the remixes of Biosphere recently released in Touch, since it was a limited edition, I'd like to ask you if you actually collect vinyls, or anything.

Thanks for the kind words! I'm a big Biosphere fan, so it was quite the honor to work with Geir. He is a good friend and a lovely gentleman, so it was a wonderful experience. I'm a fan of the Touch label, it's almost like the 'electronic music royal family.” I'm a fervent vinyl collector myself. I recently received the new Talk Talk "Laughing Stock and Mark Hollis eponymous albums, really cherishing those at the moment!

You've had some awesome collaborations playing live, and last year an encounter in a live jam with Fennesz, did you already knew him personally? How did the idea of working together come up?

Yeah, I've known Christian for a couple of years now. We've played the same festivals quite frequently and share the same agent in the EU, so it was quite organic. We were playing a festival in Italy last year and we swapped set times, so he asked me if I'd like to join him during his set. This was a quite a surprise for me and a great honour, so I did, and then we ended up doing this again in Seattle, so I was quite happy about it. Couldn't be more grateful.

Tell us about your works with Benoît Pioulard as Orcas.

It's a new band project we started and are working on a full-length album at the moment. I love working with Tom (Benoît Pioulard) – he is a very talented artist and a kindred spirit, almost like a little brother to me.

Your music is great to write about it, words instantly flow and a lot of different terms or analogies almost naturally emerge when listening to your sounds, have you ever considered this while composing?

No, not at all. The process is hard to describe. It is sort of like a catharsis in a way; a form of therapy. I strongly believe music has a true healing power, and I'm not saying this in a stupid hippie cosmical way, as I'm a staunch atheist. I mean it this sense: for a while music was a way for me to cope with my depression and own sense of mortality. I've been surrounded by death since I was a young child, so when you grow up surrounded by tragedy, you tend to develop a really tough skin and a very low tolerance for humanity and the idea of being human. This deep sense of loss can only be expressed through the music I create, and I'm extremely lucky I get to share it with other people. If I wasn't making music, I would already be dead or committed to a mental institution.

You recorded Glider being isolated a couple of weeks in a house all by yourself, and that's a process that a lot of artists had when creating masterpieces, not only musicians. It's curious or at least remarkable that with the feeling of a deep sense of loss or very low tolerance for the idea of being human, what you get after the creation process it's a very human and almost tangible expression of a feeling, through music.. The fatal irony of finding beauty behind sadness, don't you think so?

I think for me it's more about resignation – knowing that it is all ephemeral, the moment, and just like our own lives, it is nice to capture those glimpses in time. Our perception of things change, fades away, but the documentation stays. We are all decaying slowly everyday, losing every time pieces of our volatile existence. I'm very comfortable in my own skin, and knowing that one day, I won't be around, but the works (hopefully) will stay longer as part of a collective memento. It is quite remarkable to listen to romantic music pieces created almost two centuries ago and knowing it has an impact today – can't think of a better way to circumvent our own mortality.

I know you've been asked several times about the Camus quote on Glider, you mentioned it was a huge influence for you, are there any other writers that you'd also add quotes on a release?

I love Albert Camus, he was quite influential when I was a teenager. I'm a huge fan of Uruguayan writer Horacio Quiroga (you may be familiar with him). His life story is very similar to mine, marred with tragedy from an early age, so I can really relate to his writings. I think he is possibly the greatest writer in the Spanish language and a huge inspiration/influence to me.

Do you work in any other artistic expression besides music?

I love photography and film, but I suck at both. I would love to work on some more film scores though. At thw moment I'm writing a score and it's been quite fun to do. 

Both as The Sight Below or Rafael Anton Irisarri you had some album covers with landscapes, and the visual aspect seems to be really important in your presentations, have you ever felt  music as images?

Most of my work is directly influenced by my everyday surroundings (the Pacific Northwest region of the US). I think, in a way, my most recent full-length album, The North Bend, was a sort of audio postcard of this region. While I don't consciously try to write music that would serve as a backdrop to for instance, a hike in the woods, I do however believe in utilizing my everyday surroundings as a sort of canvas. That's when all the field recording work I do comes in handy – processing field recordings and using it as a sound source for a composition is as close as I can get to utilizing nature as part of my creative process.

* An extract from The Stranger by Albert Camus

* Top image by Pierpaolo Sala - Live at NODE festival

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