Rafael Anton Irisarri lives and works in New York. In addition to several LPs for labels such as Ghostly International, Room40, Morr Music and A Strangely Isolated Place, he can look back on a history of numerous worldwide live performances over the last few decades. Some years ago, he also set up a mastering studio, Black Knoll, which he has been running ever since to great acclaim from a wide range of artists.
As a conversation channel has opened up due to an upcoming joint release, I was happy to take the opportunity to ask him a few questions:
JS: You taught yourself all the musical skills. I know many people who did exactly the same (Markus Guentner… and it was similar for me). For example, I often imagined how this or another piece might have been created, what effects etc… I often realized that I never managed to achieve what I thought would lead to the goal. however, by imagining how something should be done and trying to get such results, I tried things that then turned out to be “style-forming” for myself… even better, that it wasn’t planned… would you agree that people who set out to try things out fail, but in failing discover a variety of possibilities, and thus develop a musical identity…?
RAI: Absolutely. Failing is equally as important (if not more so) than succeeding. Failing presents the opportunity to learn and try again, utilizing a fresh perspective as a result. Most of the music I create in the studio comes from improvisations, and those can go in either direction, something brilliant or something terrible. Taking the risk however is what makes something brilliant happen. The safe road is almost always the fool’s road. My role as an artist is more akin to an editor, where I am managing the accidents that happen while I improvise and take chances.
If you make work that is true to yourself and what you envision to do as an artist, you will find your own way of doing things, at your own pace. If the work is interesting and contributes to the larger collection of works already there, you will find other people will pay attention.
More importantly: know yourself and never lose sight of why you started making music in the first place. Keep being curious about music and the world at large.
JS: You have communicated the idea of focussing on a defined range of sounds / sound generators in the work process and consciously imposing limitations on yourself or actively dealing with them. Do you support the theory that limitation favors the creative process?
RAI: I am a firm believer in that comfort only breeds mediocrity. Scarce resources and limitations on the other hand, they are truly the mother of inventions. To me the most crucial part is identifying what your limitations are, then using those as parameters and developing an aesthetic around them. Turn it around: what should be a flaw now becomes an asset in your artistic practice. Work with what you have, not what you wish you had and create work around your skill level. For example, I play the guitar but I’m not an accomplished player at all (not in the traditional sense anyway). I developed my own style of playing from my own limitations with the instrument. This doesn’t mean that I don’t know the instrument like the palm of my hand, I do. What it means to me is I wouldn’t try to make music that needs the skills of an Eddie Van Halen (or some other virtuoso guitar player). I play what I am able play and developed the sound of what I make around it, not in spite of my limitations but rather because of them. I flipped it around you: I turned my own limitations into something that is unique to me, that works for me.
The same principle can be applied to gear: make music with what you already have, not what you wish you had. Ultimately, equipment won’t fix the lack of inspiration or ideas. Many times we can fall in the mindset of “if only I had X piece of gear, I could make great music.” That to me is the death of creativity. Rather, think, “what can I make with X piece of gear” and utilize those limits, I can assure you, something unique will come out of it.
JS: How important is nature as a source of inspiration for your work? As someone who lives in a big city, what opportunities are there for you to come into direct contact with the natural environment in everyday life?
RAI: I’m lucky enough to live away from the city, in a rural area north of New York City and I am surrounded by nature. It is very quiet out here, and the setting can be very inspirational but also, deeply focused. It feels like a retreat of sorts. Whenever I’m in an urban setting, I enjoy it as well. The contrast from my usual surroundings can also be a source of inspiration, specially when traveling to a foreign place, a new place, or merely the act of being on the move, on the road. I’ve gather countless of hours of field recordings in these settings – particularly in major cities like London, Berlin, etc – there is always some interesting sound to record.
JS: The ever-increasing presence of information via the internet (“social media”, streaming sites, online shops, etc.) is accelerating the user’s reception rate noticeably. While as a teenager I listened to the album “Ten” by Pearl Jam practically every day for more than 2 years, such a deep engagement with a work of this day and age presumably hardly takes place any more. Does music now play a subordinate role for many people? And how can we counter the overabundance of content (especially in a musical context) ?
RAI: This is a massive problem. I think Robert Henke referred to it as “the problem with abundance” but to me is more like the tyranny of abundance. We live in an era where the generation that grew up with anything available at the palm of their hand is simultaneously the least curious, and thus, has very little interest in discovering music on their own and connecting the dots. Everything is mostly spoon fed. I think partly because it is so easy. I was talking with my niece, who is 15 and she mentioned liking the Cramps now, mostly because a song was played on a TV show she likes. I said to her: “I was listening to the Cramps, when I was about your age. This wasn’t mainstream music, it was INCREDIBLY hard to come across it. You needed to special order it at a record shop actually” and I think putting that much effort into something you liked made it so you cherished it a bit more, for a longer period of time. When I was growing up, I was incredibly poor and only had access to a very small number of records, but I’d listen to them much more often. In fact, most of it became the soundtrack to my formative years. It had a profound impact on me, on my worldview, it became a way of life for me. Being part of a music subculture and having a sense of place and belonging I couldn’t easily find around me. And that to me is a massive paradigm shift on how younger people listen to music currently. Music is no longer something most people seek out, but rather it is part of some other activity, in a way that is more passive in the way you interact with it. Then, with so much “content” out there, it is like sifting for gold at a river. Once in a while you may discover something that impacts you, but for the most part, you just sit there with your pan, waiting for something to happen.
JS: From a listener’s perspective, what paths would you take right now to find interesting music ? And as a musician and producer, what communication channels do you use, and how does that feel?
RAI: I’m in a very unique and unusual position: I’m constantly getting exposed to new, interesting music, because I work as a mastering engineer, so I’m getting sent music by amazing artists on a regular basis. I have a very specific set of parameters in my studio practice: if I don’t truly enjoy something I hear, then I won’t work on it. I feel that I cannot do a very good job if I am not 100% into the music. I also feel like with so much content out there, why would I want to contribute more to the perennial saturation with music I wouldn’t listen to myself or I don’t believe in? This is of course a partly ethical question, but to me it is important that if I’m spending many hours a day working on something, I have to enjoy it and believe in it.
JS: How did you go about becoming a mastering engineer? Did you realize at some point that you want to/can put your stamp on the material on a level other than the compositional one?
RAI: I started my “proper” music career in Seattle during the 2000s. Back then I was organizing electronic music shows, many times running the live FOH soundboard for these events. This eventually lead me to working on many friends recordings, which in turn got me interested in mastering, as many times my role was finalizing friend’s recordings for CD self-releases, demos, etc. I started to read many books about the matter, spent many hours in studios as an intern, and practiced a lot, studying along the way. Eventually, as more friends kept asking me to master their albums and started to do work for labels, I made the conscious effort to build a dedicated mastering room when I moved to NY over 10 years ago now. It took me a very long time to put together, as I lost all my possession during the move from Seattle, but by 2015, I had built the first NY iteration of Black Knoll. Over the years, it has grown organically and created a very solid client base. I feel quite blessed I’m able to work doing something I genuinely love. I’ve had the incredible privilege of working with many of my musical heroes, and simply put, there is not monetary value than can remotely match the feeling when an artist you basically idolize growing up (or later in life) pays you complements for your work on their music.
JS: What strategies do you use to approach other people’s musical material as a mastering engineer? How do you manage to take a bird’s eye view, possibly putting your own preferences aside and finding the most objectively good solution to stage the music in the best possible way?
RAI: I think of mastering as a system of checks and balances. A compromise between artistic vision and what a track needs to be able to translate properly into a variety of playback systems. It starts with respecting the mix and the artist intent and working from there. Even though I have all the equipment and the years of experience to do it myself, I seldom master my own music. I much rather have a second opinion, someone I trust, that has the same expertise as me, listen to my work and give me feedback. A fresh set of ears interpreting my music sort of thing. When you are too deep in the weeds of something, you can lose perspective sometimes, and having that trusty set of ears tell you: “your initial instinct (or approach) was spot on” is priceless.
Most people refer to mastering as a “dark art.” Many artists don’t known about it, and a lot of mastering engineers relish that many don’t truly understand what it is. But I’m quite the opposite. I like having artists see what mastering is about and learn a thing or two because ultimately it’s a learning process for the artist and will make them a better producer in the long run. Mastering to me is a technical occupation, but also partly artistic. The sound I strive for and ultimately bring to anyone’s work is the combination of my room, speakers, equipment, and knowledge, with a little artist’s perspective thrown in there. Good mastering embellishes the mixes while respecting the artist’s intent. Mastering is not necessarily about making the music sound louder: it’s about making it sound nicer, with a certain character and uniqueness to it. And that sort of perspective is something you can never get from an algorithm. You need a human ear.
Joachim Spieth 