Just dug this one out – forgot to re-publish back in ’09, but it remains one of my favourite records of the past few years…
The Brag, December 2009
The idea of the album as a collection of songs bound by a sonic narrative is growing ever more antiquated. But it’s equally as persistent, quietly championed by musicians who choose to ignore the commercial realities of pay-per-song downloading and opt, instead, to create albums instead of singles. Ray Raposa is the 28-year-old Portland-based singer and songwriter behind solo project, Castanets, and a believer in the album.
Ray Raposa, image C/O http://rcrdlbl.com
“I’m still pretty old-fashioned and stick-in-the mud in that I want records to make sense as records and prefer people to listen from start to finish,” says Raposa. “I need [the record] to be a cohesive thing. Mainly it comes down to establishing a sonic narrative for the record that I admit may be more important to me than to someone paying 99 cents per song on iTunes and getting stuck with a 50-second synth snippet.”