American multi-instrumentalist Rafael Anton Irisarri is one of today’s foremost ambient composers, creating oceanic symphonies with tape loops, bowed electric guitar and vast washes of overdriven sound. Over the years, he 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.

His most recent album for Dais, ‘Peripeteia’ (a sudden reversal of change in circumstances) embraces the far banks of dark ambient terrain—culling fragments made from dust, debris, field recordings, and stretched sonic time capsules whilst creating the soundtrack to these strange times of 2020.

A prolific sound engineer, Irisarri has worked with the likes of Ryuichi Sakamoto, Julianna Barwick, Grouper, Telefon Tel Aviv, and dozens of other artists at New York’s legendary Black Knoll Studio. 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.

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-acclaimed 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.

After signing with Ghostly International in 2008 and releasing Glider (his debut album as The Sight Below), Irisarri started traveling frequently to perform live throughout the world. His 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 decontextualizes the audience’s relationship to the venue, creating an immersive, otherworldly environment. Throughout the last decade, Irisarri has been commissioned for performances at prestigious international festivals like Sónar (Spain), Mutek (canada), MiTo (Italy), Todaysart (the Netherlands), Gamma (Russia), Dark Mofo (Tasmania), and Unsound (Poland).