Rafael Anton Irisarri drops new cassette Midnight Coulours on Geographic North

Rafael Anton Irisarri drops new cassette Midnight Coulours on Geographic North

My new years resolution was to be awake less. Every hour I’m asleep is one less hour someone’s gonna call me up and tell me there’s work to do down at the docks. So far I’m doing well, mostly because I’m in bed most nights by 9:30 p.m; I feel like I haven’t seen a midnight in years. So, when TMT news editor Dan Smart woke me up early this morning and whispered in my ear, “Taylor you’ve got to write up this new Rafael Anton Irisarri release on Geographic North. It’s called Midnight Colours, and it just came out this morning. It’s about the hour of night you haven’t been awake for in months, but you’re the only one I’d trust for the job,” I knew it was a big ask, but I told him I’d do my best.

So: I pulled on my underwear, poured some milk over a bowl full of coffee beans, brushed the ashes off my tattered copy of Strunk & White, and dove in.

Midnight Colours follows releases like The Shameless Years from 2017 and A Fragile Geography in 2015.

As I went deeper, driven by Dan’s cooing voice, I felt my blood began to pump again. I could do this. I dropped in links like it was nothing. I learned that Midnight Colours finds Irisarri at his most “emotionally urgent,” exploring a darkened landscape of man-made catastrophes. The title itself drawing a reference from the Doomsday Clock that’s recently found itself painfully close to midnight. The sounds on Midnight Colours come largely from Irisarri’s use of “degraded tape,” running sounds through a broken, mis-aligned tape machine, imparting them with a fragmented warmth. The whole release spins pessimism and optimism against one another like buzzing tops.

With my meager lines all typed up, I knew I’d nearly done it. I knew all I had to do was clean up my commas a bit and reiterate that the album was out TODAY — February 27 — digitally and as a limited edition cassette. I knew that, with that (and as long as I remembered to include any relevant album ordering links, cover art, embedded streaming content, and properly TMT-formatted tracklisting info, of course), Dan would be so proud of me that he’d nearly burst.

Midnight Colours tracklist:

01. The Clock
02. Falling Curtains
03. Oh Paris, We’re fucked
04. Circuits
05. Every Scene Fades
06. Two and a Half Minutes
07. Drifting
08. A Ruptured Tranquility

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