Ray Raposa of Castanets has never allowed convention to determine his life or his music.
At the age of 15, he tested out of high school and traveled America on a Greyhound bus.
On record, his foreboding variety of distinctly American folk is cross-pollinated with an esoteric interpretation of metal, electronic music and hip-hop.
Under the moniker Castanets, Raposa has released three albums, culling from unexpected sources to provide the distinct genetic makeup of his sound.
“I’m not inclined very often to put on solo-dudes-with-guitars records or whatever,” Raposa said.
“There are all kinds of things informing this music. I listen to dance music. I listen to hip-hop more than I listen to folk. I listen to black metal more than I listen to folk or indie music, certainly.”
The general irreverence Raposa expresses toward the tradition of rustic folk that Castanets is ultimately indebted to is equaled by his irreverence toward the hoards of blogs flooding the Internet. Apparently a man out of his time, Raposa consciously dissociates himself from the fast-paced Internet community of bloggers that most independent musicians have been compelled to cooperate with in recent years.
“I guess I have issues with the attention span of an MP3-blog culture,” Raposa said. “I still like records; I like records that start and end. But it seems like the amount of time that it’s taking people to process and dispose of things is foreign to me. It’s not something that leads to anything. You have blogs that are almost required to hype four dudes with guitars every week. Just a new four dudes with guitars ““ white dudes complaining about (stuff). You can only get excited about that so many times.”
Raposa appropriates elements from his preferred genres according to his own whims, while never outright abandoning his overriding Gothic-folk aesthetic.
On both his 2004 debut “Cathedral” and his 2005 follow-up “First Light’s Freeze,” haunting songs ruminated on darkness are framed by clashing, noisy interludes.
On his most recent album, 2007’s “In the Vines,” he opens with “Rain Will Come,” a gentle ballad about coming to terms with life’s inevitabilities. However, halfway through, he abandons the initial track, allowing apocalyptic feedback squalls to blanket the fragile acoustic strum. “And the Swimming” matches an ethereal, slow-moving arrangement with the deep thud of a programmed 808 beat that would be more at home on an experimental electronic record or hip-hop track.
Raposa enlists assistance in forming his singular vision for Castanets from a select group of musicians. In doing so, Raposa has developed an insular circle of musicians, standing at odds with the majority of the independent music community.
“There’s not too much going on that I find that exciting,” Raposa said. “I got a couple friends that I think make great records. But outside of my circle there’s far more music that I find terrible than music that I find inspiring. There’s just too damn much of it.”
When composing “In the Vines,” Raposa received no small creative stimulation from musicians he does find exciting, moving into a house in the Bed-Stuy neighborhood of Brooklyn with histrionic art-punks Dirty Projectors and the peppy, post-graduate Graceland-obsessed Vampire Weekend.
“We broke up that house, but it was exciting,” Raposa said. “There were so many good records that came from that house. In six months or eight months, everyone was shut off in their room making these epic works. Just to be around that was a good, stimulating vibe.”
“There was probably more inter-band competition than any of us would care to admit ““ at least between a couple people in that house and a couple other people in that house,” Raposa said. “Just a healthy amount of one-upmanship, I’m sure. When you go to your friend’s room and when you hear how good his record’s sounding, you want to get your record to where you want it sounding.”
No stranger to the road, Castanets will conclude a West Coast tour in Los Angeles at the Echo tonight. Rather than bringing a full band to interpret the complexity of Castanets’s records, Raposa translated his music into a spare, two-man setting for this tour.
“(The songs) are a lot quieter,” Raposa explained. “I just did a few Europe shows that were all solo shows, though. So, with two people it feels like epic rock music to me after four months of solo shows.”
Following this tour, Castanets plans to keep a busy schedule, perhaps governed by a to-do list Raposa posted on his MySpace page in January. Among these items is a new album that Raposa recorded in the desolate environment of a small Nevada town. Raposa explained this album will follow in Castanets’ attempts to defy predictability.
“I feel it’s a lot dirtier ““ it’s got more rock on it, it’s got more of a real-time vibe for me,” Raposa said.
“We’re doing a dub (reggae) version of the record. That should be coming out a month after that.”
“Dub,” Raposa assured. “D-U-B.”