“Control Your Soul’s Desire for Freedom” by Rafael Anton Irisarri (feat. Julia Kent and Hannah Elizabeth Cox)

Ambient drones probably aren’t anyone’s first choice for political protest. For starters, such music possesses no lyrics, so what can it actually say about anything? Plenty, it turns out, as evidenced by Rafael Anton Irisarri’s FAÇADISMS. The prolific composer describes his 2024 album thusly:

The impoverished peoples of the Americas have known all along that “freedom” is a cruel illusion crafted by the elites, akin to Potemkin’s fake villages designed to impress Catherine the Great. FAÇADISMS illustrates a twisted inversion where the rulers deceive their subjects with illusions of safety, democracy, and free speech to create a grotesque mirage of control over their own lives.

FAÇADISMS is billed as “a late capitalist lament of simmering electric despondency” — a description that certainly conveys the sonic and thematic feel of “Control Your Soul’s Desire for Freedom.” For nearly eight minutes, Irisarri layers his bruised and crumbling drones until they become a claustrophobic nightmare that captures the powerlessness many of us feel today as our elected leaders openly embrace cruelty and despotism.

And yet, it’s a testament to Irisarri’s skill, as well as that of his collaborators — cellist Julia Kent and singer Hannah Elizabeth Cox — that the song possesses a majestic undercurrent suggesting, however shakily, that hope is not entirely lost. That our helplessness and despair don’t have to be the final word but can, instead, give rise to action and agency. (I’m reminded of Low’s 2018 masterpiece Double Negative, which found beauty amidst similarly bruised and broken soundscapes.)

Or is that all just part of the aforementioned “cruel illusion”? It’s a question that perfectly sums up what makes FAÇADISMS such a fascinating and provocative listen.

FAÇADISMS is currently available on Black Knoll Editions.