Rafael Anton Irisarri returns in February 2026 with Points of Inaccessibility, a new full-length exploration of memory, mediation and the quiet distances carved by contemporary life. Written, performed and produced during a spring 2025 residency at Uncloud in Utrecht, the album arrives on the heels of the reissue of A Fragile Geography, extending Irisarri’s signature strain of emotionally charged modern classical music.
The residency took place inside the former Pieter Baan Centre, a forensic psychiatric facility whose atmosphere left a tangible imprint on the work. Within its austere rooms, Irisarri developed long bowed-guitar passages, feeding them through looping systems and pedal chains that swelled into vast, vaporous architectures of sound. Dutch media artist Jaco Schilp, whose point-cloud visual research unfolded simultaneously, processed these improvisations in real time, generating flickering, unstable images that mirrored the music’s own dissolution of form.
Back in New York at Black Knoll Studio, Irisarri shaped these sessions into four movements, refining structure while preserving the immediacy of their origins. Synth textures, Moog bass and strings extend the harmonic field without overshadowing the raw bowed-guitar material. Abul Mogard contributed editorial guidance, helping guide transitions and internal pacing.
A standout composition arrives with the third track ‘Signals from a Distant Afterglow’, featuring Karen Vogt, whose vocal loops drift through the mix like fragile transmissions from the past – one of the album’s most affecting and heart-rending moments.
Conceptually, Points of Inaccessibility draws on the geographical idea of Poles of Inaccessibility, reframed through the distortions of digital life. Irisarri interrogates what he calls “digital shamanism” – the rituals of algorithmic comfort that promise connection yet deepen isolation.
The result is one of Irisarri’s most melancholic and resonant works to date: a sound in flux, suspended between closeness and disappearance, asking whether genuine proximity remains possible in a time defined by mediated experience.
Points of Inaccessibility is set for release on 6th February via Black Knoll Editions. Order a copy from Bandcamp.
Photo by Iulia Alexandra Magheru
TRACKLIST
1. Faded Ghosts of Clouds
2. Breaking the Unison
3. Signals from a Distant Afterglow
4. Memory Strands