– featured image courtesy of alex locater –
three love songs will forever be a landmark achievement. sam ray’s foray into introspective ambience as ricky eat acid, tinged ever so slightly with hints of house music, resonated deeply with listeners; three love songs was also far and away our favorite album of 2014.
ray is musically dexterous – since three love songs, he’s released an album under his julia brown moniker and has reformed his once-defunct punk band, teen suicide, who have since toured and released a sprawling album of their own – yet this chameleonic tendency manifests perhaps most acutely and frequently within the work he creates as ricky eat acid. his subsequent material under the moniker has traversed edm-informed soundscapes and smothered itself in pillows of dark, ominous synths, yet each track is unmistakably a ricky eat acid effort, a testament to ray’s ability to push boundaries creatively while still maintaining such a singularly raw emotional connection.
“hey,” the lead single from the forthcoming ricky eat acid full-length, talk to you soon, melts some of ray’s more aggressive ventures into a pliable material: rigid drum beats and vocal samples that can prop up flittering pianos and string arrangements without depriving them of their consonance. the song’s apex is early and revelatory, with owen pallett’s strings helping “hey” shed its sleepy, pensive facade for an extended period of jubilance.
talk to you soon is out october 28th via the brooklyn imprint terrible records; in addition to pallett’s contributions, the album features guest vocals from caroline white, spencer radcliffe, and harmony tividad, as well as collaborative work with the black metal band wreck & reference. revel in “hey” below.
Dimestore Saints 