Product Description
Abul Mogard �~ Rafael Anton Irisarri: Two solitary sound artists intersect. In this second chapter, a mist of anonymity and meticulous sound design blend together, and modular synthesizers and rotating speakers paint a gigantic, still wave. In the spring of 2025, Abul Mogard and Rafael Anton Irisarri created the prototype for this work during a three-day residency at Morphine Raum in Berlin. In a space where the audience surrounded the performers, they recorded the performance, which changed form each night, using multi-track recording. Minimal yet powerful sound equipment?rotary speakers, modular synthesizers, and bowed guitars?emerged as "music of the place," shaking the space itself. The soundscape, subsequently reconstructed in Rome and New York, deepens through a process that goes beyond mere editing, stretching time itself. Motifs are stretched to their limits, fragments float, and rhythms dissolve. Furthermore, with the addition of Martina Bertoni's cello and Andrea Burelli's violin/voice, the music, while retaining its contours, begins to breathe more organically. All elements are reorganized into one massive flow through Mogard's meticulous layering and repeated paring down. The opening track, "In the Eastern Wild," slowly rises from an almost silent contour, eventually transforming into a huge mass of sound imbued with low-frequency energy. The fluctuations created by the rotating Leslie speaker give the sound internal motion, simultaneously achieving stillness and propulsion. In "Over the Domes," the sound field expands laterally, and the sustained modular drone and the delicately plucked guitar intersect like waves. In "A Blue Descent," the music suddenly sinks into introspection, with Bertoni's cello filling the space with growling bass tones, imprinting deep shadows on the music. In the album's core track, "In a Quiet Radiance," a gentle guitar ostinato forms the core, creating a luminous stillness where time seems almost frozen. Eventually, violin and cello emerge from beneath the surface, slowly weaving their way through the harmonies. And the moment Burelli's voice comes to the forefront, this piece transcends mere ambient music and reaches an emotional breaking point. "Of Blessed Ages" drifts between major and minor keys, with decaying melodies overlapping, giving the feeling that the music itself is dissolving into time. In the final track, "Among Shadows," the layers of sound quietly recede, leaving only reverberations as a dark afterglow in the space. Their music, oscillating between restraint and maximal, is like a massive tide that surges while remaining still. It's easy to see why the British magazine Crack Magazine described it as "a huge wave that remains still in mid-air," and the Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant wrote of it as "overwhelming sound that hits you right in the heart." Irisarri himself recalls, "At one point, I couldn't tell if it was my sound or Abul's. It felt less like two people playing together, and more like a single system operating autonomously." Marja de Sanctis, who created the cover art, revisited the vessel sculptures from the previous album, but transformed them into a "post-firing" state. From unfinished to finished, from immediacy to persistence, this transformation symbolizes the very process of sound generation and fixation in this work. Like its surface that shines when it catches the light, this music also slowly takes shape in the silence.
