Rafael Anton Irisarri - Hopes and Past Desires (2009)

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fking love this 7"
this post is a celebration of me finally getting the physical copy

(btw Danny Norbury handles the strings on the first track)

"The man behind The Sight Below (and, of course, the excellent Daydreaming album on Miasmah) returns with a gorgeous, limited edition 7" for new Chicago imprint, Immune. The Seattle-dwelling composer teams up with Dany Norbury for 'Hopes And Past Desires', a mesmerising, hauntingly beautiful piece of music comprised of exchanges between muffled electric piano chords and Norbury's otherworldly, reverberant strings. In terms of its constituent parts this is an incredibly simple piece of music, but there's magic in these grooves, and Irisarri's music makes a resoundingly haunting contribution to the realm of electronic/modern classical composition. Flip over and 'Watching As She Reels' is suggestive of a more upbeat take on Deaf Center's Pale Ravine, or perhaps a more minimal Library Tapes; there's a certain sepia-tinted quality to these sounds, and the whole exercise seems soaked in memory and a sense of nostalgia (for something or other) that always manages to avoid outright sentimentality. Absolutely sublime music - pick one up while you can."
via boomkat