Ray Raposa grew up playing punk rock in San Diego. He tested out of high school at the age of 15 and explored the United States on Greyhound buses for four years before spending some time settled in New York. Under the persona of Castanets, he became a staple in the freak-folk movement, releasing records and continuing to travel the nation. One of these trips, a recent tour of the Intracoastal Waterway, was made in a sailboat with friends and musicians Jana Hunter and Peter and the Wolf’s Red Hunter.
Of his traveling lifestyle, however, Raposa says, “These days, France is as much home as anywhere.” The guitarist/songwriter can’t be blamed for feeling at home on the road; he recently spent nine months mobile, touring the US and parts of Eastern Europe while making his latest record, City of Refuge (Asthmatic Kitty).
City of Refuge was created in a motel room in Overton, Nevada, a town he discovered while driving across the country on a tour last January. “I was attracted to the idea that it didn’t have reference points,” Raposa says. “There is no stoplight or grocery stores, and it has a population of 500. There’s little to distract you.”
Raposa spent one month writing and recording alone in the motel room, and at times he collaborated with label-mate Sufjan Stevens and other friends to produce an organic, seamless record. Raposa recorded space-echo loops and short instrumental passages of static noise to incorporate them as individual tracks on the record. The result sounds in some ways sealed off from what modern music would sound like, in that it is more natural than over-produced and digitally compressed.
“There’s more love in [City of Refuge],” he says. “It’s not as dark. Lyrically, it’s in a more forgiving and accepting place than the other album.”
Raposa refers to his 2007 album, In the Vines, which was shaped in part by being robbed at gunpoint in front of his home in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. A year of depression followed, along with the record, which became synonymous with his mugging. “[City of Refuge] is closure to Vines in a certain way, going about things,” he says of the ordeal. “[In the Vines] reads far worse than it was. I’ve learned not to put quotes into press releases. It was a weird angle.”
With four records in the span of four years under his belt, Raposa has already completed a follow-up to City of Refuge, and a follow-up to that is in the works. “I can’t keep secrets,” he says.
A live Castanets show is akin listening to an unreleased album. Raposa’s refusal to use set lists as well as a varying cast of accompanying musicians in his line-up result in a unique experience at every performance. “Touring is a fun way of presenting things,” he says. “It leads to entirely new, fresh ways of presenting things.” Raposa admits that there are times when he wishes that he had incorporated elements of his live shows into his albums, and he’s even come to a ready solution: recording his live shows every night. But Raposa holds back.
“[The experience] belongs to the audience,” he says. “All of the factors are a part of it: how long they’ve driven to get [to the venue], what they had for dinner. It’s not mine.”