Rafael Anton Irisarri

Ghostly International Presents SMM: Context
w/ Rafael Anton Irisarri, Goldmund, Kyle Bobby Dunn and special guest Noveller
4.24.11
$12 in advance | $15

ARTISTS INFO

“Irisarri embodies the hybrid genre…the new kind of composer, who exists in an undifferentiated welter of pop, techno, and classical.” - PITCHFORK

RAFAEL ANTON IRISARRI is an American composer, multi-instrumentalist, producer and media artist based in Seattle, Washington. He is predominantly associated with post-minimalist, drone and electronic music, exploring textural aesthetics for over half a decade. His pointillist compositions lean towards ostinato motifs that tap into minimalist ideals while his studio production style is characterized by dense layers of reverb and delay, suggesting a blurred cinematic quality, like half-remembered dreams full of elegiac beauty. Bowed guitar textures, deep pulsing bass tones, field recordings, submerged piano notes, melancholic strings and subtle electronic counterpoints all contribute and converge equally in his music to create an oceanic experience that contrasts the epic and subdued, „like an ambient symphony recording that’s been rescued from attic entombment after half a century.” - Textura

Popmatters depicted his music as “sensual, propulsive, and shrouded in mercurial darkness” while Drowned In Sound chronicled “his ear for a soul-crushing melody continues to shine through the album’s dense caverns of reverb.” Chris Brosman from online tastemaker Pitchfork Media referred to his production work as “a beautifully bleak cloud of sound,“ while music journalist Patric Fallon praised his compositions as „dense, panoramic soundscapes.“ Irisarri is also known as the main member of electronic music/shoegaze act The Sight Below and his work is widely published in over a dozen labels around the globe, most notably on respected Ann Arbor, MI imprint Ghostly International.

Irisarri travels frequently to perform live throughout Europe, North America, Australia and the Middle East. Highlights include concerts at Barcelona’s Sónar Festival, Detroit’s Movement: DEMF, Montreal’s MUTEK, Krakow’s Unsound Festival, and London’s OpenFrame. Aside from electronic music festivals, Irisarri has presented his works at multidisciplinary arts events, including Milan’s prestigious MITO SettembreMusica festival and Israel Festival in Jerusalem.

Irisarri has collaborated live with an assortment of like-minded artists: Fennesz, Lillevan, Lawrence English, Grouper, Andrea Belfi, Simon Scott, Lusine, Shackleton, Lissom, Solvent, Svarte Greiner, and Marcus Fjellström. Back home in Seattle, Irisarri curates and produces advance sound and interdisciplinary art events, thus helping create a hub for contemporary art proposals in the city.

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GOLDMUND is Keith Kenniff, a Portland-based ambient indie electronic artist. Keith also records as Helios and is half of the shoegaze band Mint Julep, and children’s band Meadows along with his wife Hollie Kenniff. In 2010 he began the record label Unseen.

Keith Kenniff started playing drums, guitar and bass at a very young age. His musical journey took him to the prestigious Berklee College of Music, where he graduated with honors in 2006 with a B.A. in percussion and composition. In 2004 ‘Unomia’, Keith’s first album under the moniker Helios, was released followed by the critically acclaimed album ‘Eingya’ in 2006. His third album ‘Caesura’ was released in 2008.

Keith also records and performs music for solo piano under the name Goldmund for which he has six releases on Unseen Music, Type Records and Western Vinyl, including the most recent album ‘Famous Places’. Keith has toured and performed extensively throughout the US, Europe Japan and Canada.

Keith has an indie rock/shoegaze band with his wife called Mint Julep. In January, 2011 they released an EP called „Adorn“. The band will release their first full-length album, „Save Your Season“ in 2011. In September 2010 they began another project of children’s music called Meadows. They plan to release a full-length album, „The Littlest Star“, in 2011.

Keith Kenniff’s music has been featured on programs for NPR, the BBC, and can be heard in a number of documentaries and films, including celebrated indie filmmaker Harmony Korine’s film ‘Mister Lonely’ and a trailer for the 2009 film „Revolutionary Road“ by Academy Award winning director Sam Mendes. Keith has also composed music for web advertising for clients such as Honda, MTV, Canon, T Mobile, American Express, Audi, Levi’s, AEG, Vinamilk, and Christie’s.

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‘Some artists traverse boundaries. Sarah Lipstate’s work seems to come from a world where they never existed. Her color-rich visual art has a mournful literary quality to it; her short films trigger collisions of emotional crosscurrents; and her instrumental music, which she makes under the name Noveller (emphasis on the middle syllable), seems to call to attention all senses at once, to the point where even the word music seems somehow limiting.’ (Time Out NY)

‘…simultaneously soothing and mind-wrecking noise, along with a compositional depth that most loud-for-the-hell-of-it guitar droners never reach.’ (NY Press)

NOVELLER is the solo project of Brooklyn-based guitarist and filmmaker Sarah Lipstate. Handling the electric guitar as her muse, Lipstate summons a sonic palette so rich as to challenge the listener to conceive of how it?s housed in a single instrument manipulated by a solitary performer.

She released her first two full-length albums on Brooklyn noise label No Fun Productions in 2009. Noveller’s latest full-length, ‘Desert Fires’, came out via Lipstate’s own imprint, Saffron Recordings, in July of 2010. Saffron Recordings also released a split LP between Noveller and unFact (David Wm. Sims of the Jesus Lizard) last year. Lipstate is currently working on the follow-up to ‘Desert Fires’ to be released by Weird Forest in 2011.

Recently, Lipstate performed at the Suoni Per Il Popolo fest in Montreal, Decibel Festival in Seattle, and Unsound Festival in Krakow. Noveller has toured the U.S. and internationally, at times supporting acts such as Xiu Xiu, the Jesus Lizard, Man Forever, Aidan Baker, and Emeralds.

She has previously performed as a member of Cold Cave, Parts & Labor, and One Umbrella. Lipstate has also participated in Rhys Chatham’s Guitar Army, and Glenn Branca’s 100 guitar ensemble.

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KYLE BOBBY DUNN is a Brooklyn-based composer, arranger, and live performer of modern and neo-classical based drone music. He has performed in live and exclusive outdoor settings, including Banff National Park, since 2000 and has released music on various international recording labels to generally positive reception.

His work has been described as „compositions that are patience incarnate.“ His sounds „encourage an emotional response even as its seemingly infinite, creeping swirl and hum threatens to numb. A difficult feat.“

The austere, tempered tonal shifts featured in many of his compositions subtly echo the work of minimalist forerunners like Morton Feldman and LaMonte Young. At the same time Dunn occasionally intersperses quaint, almost chamberal touches which evoke more traditionally classical sources.

He released what he has referred to as his ‘first proper full length’ album, Fragments & Compositions of Kyle Bobby Dunn, on Boston’s Sedimental label in 2008 that received critical acclaim in music journals like Paris Transatlantic, Avant Music News, Vital Weekly, The Wire Magazine, Brainwashed and other specialized online and printed music publications. The album covered several years of his earliest works, mainly for strings and piano, although tinted with his specialized dronology.

In 2009, Brooklyn label Moodgadget approached him about releasing music of a more processed and guitar based nature that also included a more electronic element (working for the general aesthetics of the label) and the 5-track mini-album Fervency was released as a digital download only.

In early 2010, he re-released the Fervency material within a long form album that filled a double compact disc set of five years worth of his music. The album, A Young Person’s Guide to Kyle Bobby Dunn, arrived on the UK based label Low Point, and has been extensively praised in music journalism and considered a ‘deeply affecting’ work by The New York Times.

Dunn has mainly performed in New York City and surrounding areas along the eastern United States, since 2008.


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http://lepoissonrouge.com/events/view/2197