Rafael Anton Irisarri’s Points of Inaccessibility Maps the Spaces Between Us

In an era obsessed with constant interconnection, Rafael Anton Irisarri turns toward what lies between signals. His new album, Points of Inaccessibility, unfolds as a study of absence, where sound traces memory, distance and digital solitude, revealing less about what connects us and more about what quietly separates us.

Working across ambient, experimental and modern classical forms, Irisarri has spent nearly two decades shaping sound worlds that exist between defined states. On Points of Inaccessibility, this long held sensibility sharpens, offering a restrained meditation on how we move toward one another and slowly drift apart.

The album was conceived inside the former Pieter Baan Centre in Utrecht. Its corridors and observation rooms became the setting for improvised bowed guitar drones and electronic textures. These live sounds were fed into a visual system by Dutch media artist and Uncloud co-founder Jaco Schilp, whose point cloud software transformed audio into flickering abstract imagery, mirroring the music’s formation and decay.

Back in his New York studio, Irisarri distilled these improvisations into four movements, later divided into two parts by the BioVinyl format. The resulting work feels shaped as much by restraint as by presence.

Beyond Connectivity: A Modern Hauntology

The title Points of Inaccessibility refers to locations furthest from any other point, a concept Irisarri reframes as a metaphor for contemporary digital life. “We are constantly online, constantly visible, yet we drift further apart,” he notes, adding that today’s distances are emotional rather than geographic. This tension runs through the album as a sense of signal without arrival.

Faded Ghosts of Clouds opens the record with a muted, rising calm, while Breaking the Unison fractures the idea of synchronicity. At the center, Signals from a Distant Afterglow, featuring vocal loops from Karen Vogt, feels like a message received too late. Memory Strands closes the album with motifs that surface briefly before slipping away.

Known for his blend of ambient drift and emotional weight, from A Fragile Geography onward, Irisarri’s work remains rooted in attentive listening. His compositions function less as soundscapes than as emotional architectures shaped by memory and residue.

Points of Inaccessibility is not an album to simply listen to, but one to step into. In a moment marked by mediated presence and fractured attention, it asks what remains when the signals fade and only the quiet between them persists.

Next Live Performances

Rafael Anton Irisarri will perform live across Europe, both solo and with collaborator Abul Mogard. Upcoming dates span cities from Budapest to London.

• 23 Jan 2026, House of Music Hungary, Budapest, Hungary
• 24 Jan 2026, Strum and Iodine, Vienna, Austria
• 1 Feb 2026, LABA, Iruña Pamplona, Spain
• 6 Feb 2026, Amphitheater of the Athens Conservatoire, with Abul Mogard, Greece
• 14 Feb 2026, Casa Montjuïc, Barcelona, Spain
• 4 May 2026, Dig That Treasure Festival, London, with Abul Mogard, UK
• 6 – 8 May, TBA, Berlin, Germany
• 14 May 2026, Dabadaba, San Sebastián, Spain

The second single, Signals from a Distant Afterglow, was released earlier this week, ahead of the forthcoming album Points of Inaccessibility. The album will be released on February 6, 2026 via Black Knoll Editions and will be available at most record stores and online platforms, including ANOST in Europe.