Leandro Fresco & Rafael Anton Irisarri :: La Equidistancia (A Strangely Isolated Place)

La Equidistancia somehow manages to attain an ambient purity you rarely find these days, the material tuned to individual temperament regardless of what that may be. This emotional neutrality is paired with a breathtaking immediacy achieved within a strikingly economic timescale, this being a racy forty-two minute excursion pressed on a single, snowy-marbled vinyl LP.

There’s that ampersand again, for this latest from A Strangely Isolated Place is another long-distance collaborative affair, this time between Argentina’s Leandro Fresco and the ever prolific Rafael Anton Irisarri. Just how many of these long-distance collaborations can this imprint release and expect to work? Given just how well label-owner Ryan Griffin clearly knows how many beans make ambient: all of them.

Presumably due to the nature of the collaboration, Fresco’s name comes first here as Irisarri provided directives to Fresco, who then returned his melodic compositions for sculpting and sound design. The results are a mixture of maximal ambient tracks all too familiar to those well versed in Irisarri’s previous work, and others that bear such strong similarities to Biosphere’s glacial middle period that those seeking more and not getting it from the man himself need look no further than La Equidistancia.

Even the packaging and artwork all point to panoramic, frozen elements in spite of that contradictory, comforting warmth and familiarity so skillfully managed by Jenssen on, for example, Cirque and expertly repeated here. “Cuando El Misterio Es Demasiado Impresionante, Es Imposible Desobedecer” fuses these elements with the hypnotic, infinite drift of The Sight Below’s Glider, the latter taking center stage in the snow powder blizzard of “Bajo Un Ocaso Desteñido.”

But it’s the blinding blue giant star “Entre La Niebla” (“between the fog”) that is the exemplar of this, fusing the wide and dry pads of Microgravity and cosmic chirruping of Subtrata‘s “Hyperborea” with the dusty atmospheres and high-pitched sinewaves of Shenzhou‘s “Heat Leak,” all underpinned by the bass drones of Thomas Koner’s Permafrost and Teimo LPs. This is quite simply next-level ambience on the grandest scale imaginable, and likely one of the most immersive sonic experiences you’re ever likely to hear.

“Las Palabras Son Fuente De Malentendidos” (roughly “The essential is invisible to the eyes”) is particularly glacial, the gentle rustle of huge snowdrifts blowing across frozen tundra while the chipping and cracking of ice-sheets is both heard and felt alongside crystalline chimes and sawing strings straight from The Sight Below.

La Equidistancia bows out in grace and style with the super-maximal “Un Horizonte En Llamas” (“a horizon in flames”), the ethereal murmurs of the Aurora Borealis wreathing their way through soft pink noise and achingly introspective, white-out strings.

La Equidistancia somehow manages to attain an ambient purity you rarely find these days, the material tuned to individual temperament regardless of what that may be. This emotional neutrality is paired with a breathtaking immediacy achieved within a strikingly economic timescale, this being a racy forty-two minute excursion pressed on a single, snowy-marbled vinyl LP.

Step inside and experience the equidistant.

La Equidistancia is available on A Strangely Isolated Place.