Castanets is the musical project influenced by country, folk and experimental rock led by Ray Raposa who has been signed to Asthmatic Kitty Records since 2004. He has released seven albums, most recently Decimation Blues in 2014. Additionally, his songs appear on a number of split 7" singles and EPs with bands including Shapes and Sizes and Dirty Projectors. While Raposa is the only constant member of the band, his records and live performances feature a rotating cast of musicians. A San Diego native, Raposa has lived in Brooklyn and currently resides in Portland, Oregon.
Biography
Ray Raposa was born in Michigan City, Indiana. His family took him to San Diego when he was two years old and he grew up in the Mission Beach area. When he was 13, Raposa and his mother moved to Baja where he was home-schooled for a year. Raposa left school at the age of 15 and traveled around North America and St. Croix doing odd-jobs. He worked as a surf instructor for some time. In his late teens, Raposa became involved in the free-jazz project Womb that recorded a self-titled album in 2001, which was released in 2004. In 2003 he appeared on the Liz Janes live EP Liz Janes And The Three Hour Choir. While performing with others, Raposa had begun to develop his own musical projects. Together with Nathan Delffs, he recorded a number of CD-Rs, one of them entitled What Kind of Cure. While on tour with the band Howard Hello, Raposa began working with Liz Janes, whose was already signed to Asthmatic Kitty at the time. The What Kind of Cure album was forwarded to Sufjan Stevens who signed Raposa to the label. Instead of re-recording What Kind of Cure, Raposa instead decided to record new material for what became the Cathedral album, which appeared in October 2004. It was followed by an instrumental 12" that was split with the duo I Heart Lung. In the same year, Raposa moved to Brooklyn to pursue music together with Stevens while working in a record store. In October 2005, the band released First Light's Freeze, which was largely constructed by Raposa together with Stevens and engineer Rafter Roberts. In 2007, he released the album In the Vines, which Pitchfork described as 'indie folk.' The album City of Refuge was recorded in the Nevada desert town of Overton and released in 2007. Raposa had planned to record the whole record in Overton, but failing equipment forced him to make a temporary return to San Diego, where he and Rafter completed the album with contributions by Jason Crane, Pall Jenkins, Andy Robillard and DM Stith. Before beginning the recording of a fifth album, Texas Rose, the Thaw, and the Beasts, Raposa left New York and moved to Portland. He toured Europe in support of those releases. He estimated in 2008 that Castanets was about to kick off its tenth European tour. Raposa's touring band has included Annie Clark, Matthew Houck of Phosphorescent, singer-songwriters Jana Hunter and Red Hunter, and John McCauley of Deer Tick and Nirvana. He has toured with The Black Heart Procession, Deer Tick, Dirty Projectors, Michael Gira, Jana Hunter, Scout Niblett, Phosphorescent, Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson, and others. Raposa's most recent record, Decimation Blues, was released in 2014 by the Asthmatic Kitty label.
Style
Castanets were one of the more prominent members of the so-called freak folk movement that took place in the U.S. music scene in 2003-04. In 2008, he told Paste that "Freak-folk wasn't as cohesive a scene as it was made out to be. A lot of people are friends, but there wasn't any grand unifying focus or anything. I always got mad when people were calling my friends freaks anyway, I think the more magazines I open with my friends in them, the better. In an airport bookstore, not a police blotter." On performing live, Raposa noted that 'I guess kind of depends on the mood that I'm in as far as how many people I want to bring out, or the way that I feel about presenting certain things at certain times kind of dictates who is playing and how many of them'.
Name
The name of the band does not refer to Raposa's Hispanic heritage, instead he insisted that it was 'a complete accident. And a complete mistake'. The band had a tour with Howard Hello and Lazarus booked and What Kind of Cure had appeared on CD-R while a name had not been decided upon. According to Raposa 'I think that...possibly... mom might have suggested it'.
Side projects
In 2011 Raposa collaborated with Steven to score the documentary film Beyond This Place by Kaleo La Belle. They performed the songs live during a screening of the film on four occasions in October 2011. The title track featured Vesper. Stevens and Raposa also soundtracked La Belle's 2017 film. In September 2012 Raposa released the album Little Death Shaker under the name Raymond Byron and the White Freighter via Asthmatic Kitty. Little Death Shaker explores themes that are similar to those he takes up on Castanets' albums and features new collaborators as well as some who appeared on earlier works. The Castanets song "You are the Blood" is featured in the end titles of the famous video game ''Hotline Miami 2.' 'Sufjan Stevens' cover appears on Disc One of the seminal 2009 compilation Dark Was the Night and is reinterpreted by Canadian DJ Buck 65 and American rapper Serengeti on Disc Two.
