Rafael Anton Irisarri's latest work Midnight Colours comes after a starkly stunning run of releases on Ghostly, Morr, Room40 and Umor Rex, among others. The eight new songs were conceived as a sort of soundtrack to the "Midnight Clock or Doomsday Clock" – a symbol which represents the likelihood of a man-made global catastrophe. Recorded in 2017, when the Clock was at 2½ minutes-to-midnight (the second-closest to midnight since the Clock's start in 1947), Midnight Colours permeates with the melancholy of memories resurfacing as you get close to the end of life: the regret, the closure, the uncertainty, the anxiety, and so on. The result is perhaps Irisarri's most moving and introspective work to date, unfurling a sort of epiphany symphony and sounding like a sunrise in slow motion. Irisarri experimented with the use of heavily "degraded" tape, played through a mis-aligned Otari 8-track tape machine that was constantly on the fritz. "I felt using tape gave the music a particular texture & character, like when you watch old news reels from the 1950's, you know those that talk about the H-bomb, and how we are all doomed," he explains. Opening suite The Clock and Falling Curtain offer an elegiac dirge into the unknown, soldering on with humanity but pessimistic reality. Oh Paris, We Are Fucked retreats into a blur of mournful curiosity, while Circuits brings a glimmer of tragic hope. Every Scene Fades is brimming with eerie beauty and a distant, heaving rhythm that perfectly