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Listening Becomes Physical / A.M. & R.A.I.

The interview with Abul Mogard & Rafael Anton Irisarri.

For Abul Mogard and Rafael Anton Irisarri, listening does not begin and end in the studio. It becomes a way of moving through the world, shaping perception long after the session is over. In this conversation, they reflect on creative immersion, the impossibility of switching off, and the quiet rituals that pull them back from total absorption. This is ambient music made at the edge of what attention can sustain—and a conversation about what that edge takes from the people who live there.

When you spend hours working with these frequencies, the ones that sit at the edge of silence, the ones that require listening differently, what happens to your hearing? Does it change how you perceive sound outside the studio?

AM: I think my perception of sound is always there, even when I’m outside doing everyday things. The difference is that in the studio I need a different level of focus. I’m constantly trying to understand every detail, deciding which sounds or frequencies feel too present or not present enough. It’s a bit like finding gaps and spaces where I can imagine other elements existing. Outside the studio I still notice sounds, but I don’t analyse them in the same way, unless I hear something particularly interesting. Then I might grab my phone and record it.

RAI: Absolutely, it’s changed everything about how I move through the world. As a mastering engineer, I’ve been trained to hear what nobody else is hearing, to focus on detail at that level of granularity, and that training doesn’t just switch off when I leave the studio. But here’s the thing: it hasn’t diminished my creativity. If anything, it’s sharpened it. When I’m making something, I have to be selective about what I choose to focus on, because I could disappear down any rabbit hole of detail. That constraint forces intention. After long days in the studio, I crave silence, that elusive true silence. But that’s become almost a mythical thing. We’re noise-generating machines, constantly polluting our own world with mechanical hums, alarms, alerts, planes overhead. Real quiet is rare now. So I’ve had to make peace with that and find a different kind of rest instead.

Does the work change your body? Your nervous system? Your capacity for patience in daily life? Or do you compartmentalize it completely?

AM: Working on music requires a huge amount of patience because you often begin with almost nothing, maybe just a small fragment of sound, while imagining everything else. Sometimes the rest doesn’t arrive. You leave it for weeks or even years before finding a way forward. It demands such a high level of concentration that it sometimes feels as if my body’s CPU is running at 85%, trying to follow every nuance and the overall shape of the piece. I think I have much more patience when I’m making music than I do in everyday life. Somehow, the work creates that patience. It isn’t something I naturally carry with me.

RAI: Yeah, there’s real physical strain from working for that many hours, whether I’m in the studio or in a live setting. As you age, touring becomes harder. There are actual physical limits to what your body can do. I’d be happy in the studio 24/7 if I could, but that’s not realistic. The ears fatigue, the eyes strain from staring at a computer screen for hours. That all adds up.The harder part is switching off. That’s where the work really follows me. I’ll dream about the project I’ve been working on all day. I’ll wake up at 3 AM with a thought like “I know what I can do with that snare drum” if I’m mixing something, and suddenly I’m awake and the idea won’t let go. It’s difficult to compartmentalize.

You’re asking listeners to slow down and stay present. Do you experience that same demand on yourself as a maker? Does the work exhaust you differently than other creative work?

AM: I wouldn’t say I consciously ask listeners to stay present, but I like the idea that if they do, they can become immersed in the music and lose their sense of time. The work certainly demands a lot of concentration from me, which can be exhausting after a while. By the end of a long session, you really feel drained. As I’m writing these answers, there’s a new piece playing at quite a high volume in the background, and every time something catches my attention I stop, go back to the session and adjust it. It’s a constant cycle of listening and refining. Working at high volume also helps me feel the physicality of the music, which has always been important to me.

RAI: I don’t consciously ask listeners to slow down. I’m not making music to be shared with others necessarily, that is not the initial motivation. But once I decide something is ready to release, that’s when the listener experience becomes everything. Then I’ll spend a lot of time with the material, getting the flow right, thinking about the optimal listening experience. It’s like a chef doing omakase, you know? The selection and preparation are meticulous, considered entirely for the person experiencing it. But it’s still on my terms. My pace is completely variable. Sometimes I’ll binge and write an album in a week. Other times a piece might take me a decade to finish. It’s whatever the work needs. As a mastering engineer, I’m also highly selective about what I work on. I don’t take projects that don’t align with my aesthetic or my ideas about music. I won’t spend weeks refining something I don’t enjoy listening to. That selectivity matters because working on music I genuinely connect with doesn’t exhaust me the way it might exhaust someone grinding through projects outside their taste. I also don’t work at loud levels. I work at conversation level for about 90% of what I do. That’s where I can hear things clearly.
There’s a real distinction for me between creation and refinement. The creative side is free form and fun. Refinement, the listening and adjusting cycle, that’s where the tedium comes in. That’s where you need the most concentration.

When you finish a session in those frequencies, what do you need? What brings you back?

AM: If I’ve been working at night, which I do less nowadays, I usually need a bit of decompression. Going out onto the balcony with a drink generally works. If it’s during the day and I have to go straight back to normal life, like picking up my daughter from school, then I try to switch as quickly as I can. I’ve become quite good at moving between the studio and everyday life, although the sounds often stay with me for a while afterwards.

RAI: I’ve learned to decompress intentionally. I’ll read a book after a long session. I also find that preparing and cooking a nice meal helps realign me. It brings me back into my body, away from the detail work. But I spend most of my day in solitude working, so it’s really important to engage with friends and other people regularly. That disconnect from studio life is essential. Touring is great for that too. Seeing new places, having different experiences all over the world, that’s always inspiring. It reminds me why I do this work in the first place. Those small rituals matter more than I expected they would.

There’s a particular kind of attention required to make this music. Has that attention bled into how you move through the world? Or have you learned to turn it off?

AM: I think it’s mostly an attention to detail, and that has definitely carried over into everyday life. Sometimes I try to switch it off, or at least turn it down a little, just so I can relax.

RAI: The attention to detail has absolutely bled into how I move through the world. I can’t really turn it off, honestly. It’s involuntary at this point. I’ll notice things most people miss: the buzz of a lightbulb, a drain pipe making a drone-like sound, the particular frequency of a fork scraping a plate the wrong way. I was in a restaurant recently and picked out a 14kHz tone coming from the dishwasher in the open kitchen. That’s just how I move through space now. I’ve stopped trying to dial it down. There’s no point. It’s part of my training as a mastering engineer, and it’s become part of how I exist in the world. At first you think you want to turn it off, to relax and just not hear everything. But I’ve learned that this attention, this detail-oriented way of listening, it’s not separate from who I am. It’s enriched my understanding of sound and space, even if it means I’m never truly at rest from the world’s noise.

What’s the longest you’ve sat inside the work at one time? What happened?

AM: I couldn’t tell you what the longest session was, but I remember one in particular while I was working on my remix for Fovea Hex in 2017. After days of preparation I finally reached a point where everything seemed to flow. I started recording sounds one by one from my modular synthesiser and simply couldn’t stop. I kept going until four or five in the morning because I felt that if I stopped, I would lose that headspace. Afterwards I had the feeling I was onto something, but I was absolutely knackered.

RAI: I mentioned earlier that sometimes I’ll binge and write an album in a week, but it goes deeper than that. There are times when I won’t leave the studio for days. I get into a zone where the work is flowing and everything else just falls away. I remember one time when I was living in Seattle. My wife had gone away on a business trip, and I just stayed. Writing, creating, completely absorbed. Four days straight without leaving the house. When she came back, there was a perfectly formed spiderweb on the front door, completely undisturbed. She looked at it and asked me: “Did you just not leave the studio the entire time I was gone?” That’s how she knew. The web told the story of how deep I’d gone into the work. Time just disappears in those moments. You lose track of it completely. When you finally surface, you’re exhausted in a different way. It’s not adrenaline. It’s more like waking up from a very long dream and realizing the world kept going without you.

When you chose to make music like this, low, sparse, demanding what other kinds of music did you decide you would never make? What’s the trade?

AM: This music began almost as a form of therapy, although I didn’t realise that until years later. I was going through a very difficult period in my life, and these sounds came naturally, more naturally than anything I had made before. I never consciously decided that I would stop making other kinds of music. For many years I worked on commercial projects because that’s how I made a living. Looking back, Abul Mogard became the antidote to that. At the same time, those years taught me so much about sound and music, and working so far outside my comfort zone ultimately shaped the way I work today, even if it was far removed from the music I really wanted to make.

RAI: I didn’t have to trade anything off. I work on music I like. Sometimes I make different styles just for the fun of it, things I’d never release but that I enjoy making. Again, for myself. I have turned down a lot of work over the years though. Commercial opportunities, scoring gigs, pop artists asking me to produce their records. I used to be rather militant about my aesthetics, but I’ve mellowed with age. Life teaches you things. But I still need to work on things I genuinely enjoy, so I won’t be remixing Ed Sheeran anytime soon, you know? The thing is, I do love working outside my comfort zone. That’s where the real work happens. Comfort only breeds mediocrity. But there’s a difference between pushing yourself creatively and just taking work because it pays. I’ve always believed in the former. So I’ve been selective, and yeah, that meant turning down money. But the work I’ve done feels like mine.

What version of yourself, artistically speaking, did you have to kill to get here?

AM: None. All the versions of myself are still inside this project. Some are more visible than others, but they’ve all contributed to what it has become.

RAI: I haven’t had to kill any version of myself. My music is simply an extension of who I am. It’s like breathing, eating, walking. It’s that fundamental. I built my entire life around music, so there’s no version of me that had to die to get here because music has always been the through-line. Everything I’ve done, every decision I’ve made, has been shaped by that central thing. There’s nothing to kill when the work is just an expression of what you are.

If you weren’t making this music, what would you be doing instead? And why isn’t that enough?

AM: I’m not sure. When I was younger I liked the idea of becoming an alpine guide because I loved hiking in the Dolomites. But I never pursued that path. Looking back, I think music became a way of exploring places, just not physical ones.

RAI: When I was a young boy, I wanted to be a priest. I was raised Catholic. But then I grew up and became an atheist. The Catholic guilt and self-doubt remained however (laughs).If I wasn’t making music, I’d probably be doing stand-up comedy. If I’m in a creative field, that’s what calls to me. I find stand-up the most relatable to what I do with ambient music, actually. It’s one thing to tell jokes to a couple of drunken friends at a party. It’s another to build an entire routine that works with a crowd at a comedy club. Same with ambient music. It takes a lot of time to find your own sound and learn to communicate complex ideas in a musical language that is minimalistic and shy by nature. You have to earn that space with the listener, the same way a comedian earns laughs.

Every constraint you accept is a door that closes. How many doors have you closed? Do you ever wonder what’s behind them?

AM: Of course I wonder what’s behind those doors. Sometimes I try to open one. Occasionally I discover something I genuinely enjoy, but more often it reminds me why I chose the path I’m on. I don’t think constraints are there to limit you. They’re often what give your work its identity.

RAI: I don’t have FOMO about the doors I’ve closed. No regrets there. Constraints don’t limit me. They’re what force intention. They’re what give the work its shape and identity. I’ve recalibrated my comfort levels over time, but the fundamental philosophy hasn’t changed.
What matters to me is timing. Sometimes a project surfaces at the wrong moment and I pass. Then years later the same thing comes back around and the timing aligns differently, and suddenly it makes sense. I’ve learned to trust that.
I’m curious about the world at large, always have been. But once I’ve moved on from something, I rarely revisit it. There’s no point looking back at closed doors wondering what’s behind them. The work I’m doing now is where my attention needs to be.

What’s something you could do as a musician that you’ve chosen not to do? Why is that choice important?

AM: As a musician working on my own projects, I’ve chosen not to do things I don’t enjoy. As a producer working for other artists and productions, I often had to. Those experiences taught me a lot, but with my own music I’ve become quite radical about protecting that freedom. If I ever lost the enjoyment of making music, I think I’d also lose the reason for doing it.

RAI: I’ve chosen not to chase commercial success or external validation. That’s probably the most important one. I could have followed trends, built a brand, optimized for streaming metrics. But that would require making music differently, and the moment you do that, you’re no longer making music for yourself. You’re making it for an algorithm. I’ve also chosen not to measure my work by how prolific I am or how much I release. That pressure to constantly output, to stay relevant, to feed the machine. I’ve watched that destroy artists. What matters is that when I finally release something, it’s exactly what it needs to be. The choice not to do those things is important because it’s the only way to stay sane in this work. If I started thinking about markets and metrics and relevance, I’d stop being able to hear the music itself. I’d lose the thing that makes me want to do this in the first place.

What audiences have you given up? Who will never hear this work because of the choices you’ve made?

AM: Hopefully none. I always hope my music can reach as many people as possible. I’ve never wanted to make elitist music. My quality control is simply my own musical taste, which I hope resonates with other people. I especially like the idea that someone who doesn’t normally listen to electronic music might still connect with it.
Years ago I performed an audiovisual show with Marja de Sanctis at the beautiful Jardins Efémeros festival in Viseu, Portugal. The concert took place inside the cathedral, and because the tickets were free, the audience was incredibly mixed, from electronic music fans to local families and people who had simply decided to come along. The response was wonderful. Something similar happened more recently in Berlin, when I performed with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin. Again, the audience was incredibly diverse, and it reminded me that music doesn’t really belong to a particular scene.

RAI: I absolutely agree with that. I’ve been surprised many times when people outside the music scene, just regular people, have come up after concerts and genuinely connected with the work. It happens more often than you’d think, and it’s always nice. There’s nothing elitist about what I do. The music is what it is.
I don’t really spend much time hanging around high-brow circles anyway. I can find equal enjoyment from watching a sophisticated film one night and going with my friends and their kids to see a Disney movie the next. There’s no hierarchy there for me. Good is good, whether it’s minimalist ambient music or a kids’ film that makes people laugh. If my music reaches someone who’s never listened to electronic music before and it moves them, that’s wonderful. If it doesn’t, that’s fine too. I’m not making music for a scene or for credibility. I’m making it for myself. Whether other people connect with it is beside the point, though when they do, it’s always a gift.

Is there a point where the work asks too much? Where you have to say no? Where you stop?

AM: If it’s a specific piece of music, you eventually have to stop when it feels finished. Maybe not perfect, but finished enough that continuing would only make it worse. More generally, I’m also learning to be more selective with the projects I take on. There are only twenty-four hours in a day, and every commitment deserves your full attention. At some point you have to accept that you can’t take everything on.

RAI: I stop when the nitpicking reaches a point where the changes are only perceivable in null tests. At that point, it’s just pointless fussing. Perfection isn’t necessary, and honestly, some of my favorite music is filled with errors. It’s far from perfect and that’s what makes it work. Everything today is being perfectly quantized, auto-tuned, timed to death. The life is being systematically removed from music. In the era of AI, where machines can generate seamlessly perfect audio, the human error component in music isn’t just aesthetically more interesting anymore. It’s critical. It’s what makes something feel real and alive. Take Die Mensch-Maschine by Kraftwerk. Some of the best parts of that record are the little noise errors, the crosstalk, the erased but still audible takes on the tape. Those imperfections are what give it character. If they’d obsessed over eliminating every stray sound, the album would be sterile. Instead, it’s human and breathing. That’s when I know to stop. When continuing would only remove the thing that makes the work alive.

What’s the hardest part of making this music not technically, but existentially? What part of it costs you the most?

AM: Probably making sure the music doesn’t slowly take over the rest of your life. It’s very easy to be physically present while your mind is still somewhere inside a piece you’re working on. Family reminds you that there has to be a balance.

RAI: Probably the constant negotiation between isolation and the rest of life. I need solitude to do this work, but I also need people around me to stay sane. There’s also the self-doubt that never really goes away, the Catholic guilt whispering whether this work matters.

Do you ever regret the choices that brought you here? Not in a bitter way, but honestly is there a version of your career path where you’re happier?

AM: I had plenty of regrets when I was younger. Not because I hadn’t worked hard enough, but because I often spread myself across too many different projects instead of giving enough attention to my own work. Looking back, though, I realise that if I’d taken a different path, the music I make today probably wouldn’t exist in the same way. Nothing ever turns out exactly as you imagined, but I’m happy with where the journey has led me.

RAI: The only thing I truly regret is giving my time, energy, and creativity to people who were ungrateful or undeserving. We only have so much time available, and when those situations happen, it costs you more than the work itself is worth.
What I’ve learned, and it’s been a difficult lesson, is that you have to be paying attention to everything. Even though I’m not a pop star, I’m still a public figure. There are always people you don’t know trying to syphon something off you. So I’ve become more guarded over the years. Not cynical, just careful about who I work with, whether it’s other artists, labels, agents. I’d rather do nothing than waste energy on someone who doesn’t respect what I’m offering. Looking back, I’m happy with the choices I’ve made and where they’ve led me. The regret is just time spent with the wrong people. Time is the only thing you can’t recover.

What would need to happen for you to stop making music like this? Is there a threshold?

AM: I honestly don’t know. Maybe if I ever reached a point where I felt I had nothing left to say. But even then, I’d probably still be making sounds, just different ones.

RAI: I’ll continue making music until my last breath. Remember, I make music for myself first and foremost. Whether I release it or not doesn’t change that impulse. The work might look different, it might sound different, but the need to create will always be there. There’s no threshold. There’s no point where I stop. I stop breathing, I stop making music. That’s it.

How do you justify the time this work takes when the audience is so small?

AM: Making music still feels like a necessity before it feels like a profession. I need to spend time in the studio making sounds, whether anyone hears them or not. The fact that it has also become my work is something I’m very grateful for, because it allows me to dedicate the time the music needs. I don’t really think about how many people will hear it while I’m making it.

RAI: I agree with what Abul Mogard said. For me it doesn’t matter if one person listens or a million. I’ll still be making the same music. There’s no compromising what I do for a larger audience. That’s just not in my radar. What I’m grateful for is that I’ve been privileged enough to carve out a very niche but dedicated following that supports my music and allows me to continue releasing it. That’s the sweet spot. Not trying to reach everyone, just the people who genuinely connect with what I’m doing. That’s more than enough for me.

You make music that asks people to be patient and present. Does the work of making it teach you those things, or did you have to already be that way to do it?

AM: To be honest, I think I’m much more patient and present when I’m making music than I am in everyday life. Spending hours listening carefully to the same sounds feels completely natural to me. Being as present outside the studio is much harder. The problem is that after working intensely for long periods, you also become tired, and that’s when it’s easiest to be somewhere else mentally. I’m still trying to find a better balance, especially for the people around me.

RAI: I think I already had patience. You don’t spend a decade on a piece if you don’t have that built in. But the work isn’t about teaching you to be present. It’s the opposite. The work demands a kind of obsession that pulls you away from presence. Your mind is constantly working on the problem, even when you’re not in the studio. That’s harder to manage than just being patient.

When someone tells you they listened to your record and it changed them, does that change feel proportional to what it cost you to make? Or is there always a gap?

AM: Whenever I receive messages like that, it’s a beautiful feeling. More than making me think about what the music cost me, it gives me the energy to continue. I’ve always made music because I need to, because it’s good for me and it brings me a sense of calm. Knowing that it has also meant something to someone else makes continuing feel much easier.

RAI: It’s always nice when someone tells me the music moved them. But I don’t chase that feeling. My fuel comes from inside, from the need to make the thing in the first place. The feedback doesn’t change how I feel about the work because the work was already done for myself. But I’m not looking for equivalency. If it reaches someone and matters to them, that’s a gift.

What do you want from the people who listen to this, beyond the listening itself? Do you want them to understand what you gave up?

AM: No. I simply hope they’re able to connect with it emotionally, each in their own way. Once the music leaves the studio, it’s meant to be shared with others. People bring their own experiences to it, and I think that’s what makes music and art in general interesting.

RAI: No, what I want from people who listen is simply an experience. Their own experience. Once it leaves my studio, it’s theirs to interpret however they need to on their own terms.

Has making this music made you a better person? A worse person? A different person?

AM: I don’t know if it’s made me a better person. I hope so. It has certainly helped me express my feelings.

RAI: It’s made me a more patient and forgiving person. Not sure if that’s better or worse, but that’s what I can think of now.

When you listen back to your early work, can you feel who you were when you made it? Do you recognize that version of yourself?

AM: Yes and no. I have vivid memories of making most of my albums and pieces, but when you’re completely immersed in the work it’s almost like being in a trance. I remember the places, the atmosphere and the emotions much more clearly than I remember myself.

RAI: I seldom listen back to my own work, to be honest. When I do, I don’t always recognize that version of myself. Most of what I create comes through improvisation, both in the studio when I’m writing and on stage when I’m performing. It’s like I’m not fully present, not fully in control. The self-doubt is always there in the moment. I’ll be improvising in the studio or on stage and assume what I’m playing is shit. But when I listen back with distance, I’m surprised. It feels right. I said something I didn’t know I needed to say, something that came from somewhere I didn’t consciously access.
It’s like leaving my body and following whatever comes through. The stage disappears, the studio becomes a ritual space, and in that blur something true breaks through. I don’t always know who I was when I made it, but I recognize the truth of it. That’s what matters.

What have you learned that you can’t unlearn? What truth about sound, or time, or yourself, have you discovered that you can’t go back from?

AM: I’ve learned that the best thing you can do artistically is make something you genuinely like, rather than trying to be clever or trying to imagine what other people might want. It took me many years to arrive at that conclusion, though.

RAI: I’ve learned that constraints force intention. Comfort breeds mediocrity. And in this age of AI where everything can be perfected, the human imperfection in music, the error, that’s what actually matters. It’s what makes something feel alive.
Underneath it all is knowing that time is the only thing you can’t recover. Once you see that, everything you do is intentional, even the errors you honor.

If the work has changed you, would you want to change back? Is there anything you miss about who you were before?

AM: I miss being younger and more carefree. Funnily enough, I don’t think I ever felt very light-hearted at the time. Maybe that’s something you only realise later. There’s no way to go back, of course, so I’d rather focus on going forward now.

RAI: I don’t miss who I was before. I’m grateful for the path that brought me here. I still live fairly carefree in some ways because I don’t have the kind of responsibilities Abul does with a family. But I have my own weight to carry with the business side of things, staying afloat financially. That’s taught me things too. Would I want to go back? No. The self-doubt, the hyperawareness, the obsession with detail, all of that has made me who I am. I wouldn’t undo any of it. I feel lucky to have found work that lets me stay true to myself while still keeping the lights on. That’s more than most people get.

Listening Becomes Physical / A.M. & R.A.I.

Credits:

Artist: Abul Mogard, Rafael Anton Irisarri / @abulmogard, @blackknoll
Words: Jessy Frascarelli / @j3ssyestremy

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