Rafael Anton Irisarri – A Fragile Geography: Reworks on Black Knoll Editions

Rafael Anton Irisarri delivers a new Bass / Club, “A Fragile Geography: Reworks”, now available on Black Knoll Editions. Released on 2025-10-24. Download now.

Watch the Official Music Video on YouTube …

Behind the Bass / Club : Release Notes

A decade after its release, A Fragile Geography returns transformed. This limited edition cassette accompanies the AFG10 anniversary reissue, offering an inspired re-envisioning of Rafael Anton Irisarris landmark compositions. Reworks presents distinctive readings of these pieces, with each artist leaving their personal mark on the material. The titles remain unchanged, with the sole exception of Hiatus, reborn here as Ausencia. Together, these reimaginings extend the emotional cartography of the album into new terrains. KMRU reframes Displacement with expansive, glimmering layers that open into meditative ambient landscapes. Nairobi born and Berlin based, he is known for morphing field recordings into vivid aural experiences, often capturing the texture of footsteps, foliage, and distant city life and weaving them into contemplative soundscapes. In this version he introduces subtle new sounds, including stringlike synths that trace and heighten the pieces emotional arc. The result invites close listening, offering enveloping tones where the organic and the synthetic gently collide and flow. Penelope Trappes renders Reprisal as a voice-led invocation of the delicate and the intimate. Her wistful vocals bloom with fragile sorrow, rising over shimmering strands of strings to create a sound world at once sacred and shadowed. She is adept at channeling inherited grief into music that is transcendent and otherworldly. The interplay of her voice, the strings, and her use of space and depth draws those qualities into Irisarris orbit, imbuing Reprisal with the same spiritual weight and clarity that define her most powerful work. Kevin Richard Martin (a.k.a. The Bug) transforms Empire Systems into a cavernous Iced Mix, driven by polyrhythmic double bass motifs and sculpted from subterranean pressure and negative space. Known for pushing sound to its physical limits, Martin brings the stark intensity of his dub and noise infused practice into Irisarris architecture. The track seethes with harmonic distortion and erupts in white noise rhythms, its brooding low end depth and icy reverberant textures amplifying the tension. Vulnerability and force are set in stark relief, as silences feel as heavy as the bursts of sound themselves. The result is a stark study in atmosphere, restraint and impact, reframed through Martins singular lens of sonic mass and low end intensity. On Side B, Mabe Fratti opens with a cinematic, dreamlike, Lynchian reimagining of Hiatus in her native Spanish (Ausencia). She threads cello and voice so wondrously that her rendering feels at once hauntingly beautiful and disquieting. Emotionally charged melodies shift in unexpected directions, while her soft, intimate vocals hover above Irisarris brooding synth textures. Frattis gift for blending experimental and avant pop sensibilities with visceral, emotionally powerful expression shines resplendently here. She gives voice to Irisarris reflections on the passage of time and his growing desire to reconnect with his familial roots. Abul Mogard stretches Persistence into a vast drone elegy. A master of patient sound sculpting, Mogard layers evolving waves of analog synths into a dense shroud that radiates its own internal light. Gradual surges of tone and subtle harmonic shifts emphasize the pieces endurance and inevitability. Irisarris original composition, in Mogards hands, becomes a rumination on times unrelenting flow. Melancholy and transcendence coexist in equal measure in this engulfing, cathartic rework. William Basinski and Gary Thomas Wright close the cycle with a spectral version of Secretly Wishing for Rain. Basinskis field recordings of Reseda rainfall and birdsong, which open and close the rework, add a personal touch and evoke the imagined sound of a grainy film reel flickering to life. The piece suspends Irisarris yearning for the Pacific Northwest, lodging it hazily between memory, place and an unreachable dream. It feels like a fading recollection, half forgotten and half felt. A final gesture that dissolves the album into vapor, leaving the listener adrift in its lingering afterglow. Mastered with great care by Stephan Mathieu and featuring a remixed version of the original artwork by Daniel Castrejón, this edition refracts the language of the original through new prisms. Less a return than a passage, across time, across interpretation, into uncharted emotional realms.

Download Rafael Anton Irisarri ‘A Fragile Geography: Reworks’ in MP3, FLAC, and AIFF Formats

Tracklist & Tempos

1. Rafael Anton Irisarri – Displacement KMRU rework, Download MP3

   Ambient / Experimental | 98 BPM – G Minor | 4:16

2. Rafael Anton Irisarri – Reprisal Penelope Trappes rework, Download MP3

   Ambient / Experimental | 153 BPM – G Minor | 3:24

3. Rafael Anton Irisarri – Empire Systems Kevin Richard Martin rework – Iced mix, Download MP3

   Ambient / Experimental | 105 BPM – C Major | 3:48

4. Rafael Anton Irisarri – Ausencia Mabe Fratti Hiatus rework, Download MP3

   Ambient / Experimental | 69 BPM – D Minor | 3:10

5. Rafael Anton Irisarri – Persistence Abul Mogard rework, Download MP3

   Ambient / Experimental | 103 BPM – C Major | 3:23

6. Rafael Anton Irisarri – Secretly Wishing for Rain William Basinski & Gary Thomas Wright rework, Download MP3

   Ambient / Experimental | 99 BPM – Db Minor | 3:26