Orcas

Orcas unites minimalist composer/producer Rafael Anton Irisarri and ambient pop singer/songwriter Benoît Pioulard, both of whom excel at shaping fragile atmospheres and indelible melodies. Their 2012 self-titled debut captured the Pacific Northwest’s misty beauty and mystery through dense yet restrained electro-acoustic textures, while 2014’s Yearling imposed tighter architecture and a grander scale on the material. A decade afterward, the rising and falling pieces on How to Color a Thousand Mistakes slotted naturally into the shoegaze and dream pop revival of the 2020s.

The pair first crossed paths in late 2009 when Irisarri, co-curating Seattle’s Decibel Festival, scheduled Pioulard for the electronic and digital arts weekend. After the performance they maintained contact and began recording music that gradually shifted from instrumental sketches to fully formed songs featuring vocals. Taking their name from one of the region’s signature apex predators, Orcas issued their initial recording in January 2011: a cover of Broadcast’s “Until Then” dedicated to the late Trish Keenan. The track reappeared on the duo’s self-titled debut album, released in April 2012 on Morr Music. Critics praised its arresting fusion of melody and texture, and Pioulard and Irisarri spent much of that year touring Europe and North America.

For greater depth on the follow-up, Irisarri and Pioulard brought in Telekinesis drummer Michael Lerner and composer/guitarist Martyn Heyne, a live member of Efterklang. The sweeping atmospheres of April 2014’s Yearling drew partial inspiration from the mood and music of Twin Peaks; around the same period the band also recorded its own version of “Into the Night” from the series’ soundtrack.

In the ten years after Yearling, both members turned to solo work. Alongside his duties as mixing and mastering engineer at Black Knoll studio, Irisarri released introspective albums such as 2016’s A Fragile Geography and 2020’s Peripeteia. Pioulard’s catalog included ambient experiments like 2019’s Avocationals as well as the homespun ambient pop of 2016’s The Benoît Pioulard Listening Matter and 2023’s Eidetic.

Orcas resurfaced in 2024, first with an April cover of the Church’s “Under the Milky Way,” then with their third album, July 2024’s How to Color a Thousand Mistakes. Enlisting Slowdive’s Simon Scott, Mono’s Dahm Majuri Cipolla, Heyne, and others, Pioulard and Irisarri emphasized the project’s shoegaze inclinations while reflecting on major life events that had unfolded since their last collaboration.