Castanets
In The Vines (Asthmatic Kitty)

THE STORY
Ray Raposa of Castanets had almost finished his follow-up to First Light's Freeze (2005) when three men in strange masks mugged him at gunpoint in front of his home in Bedstuy, Brooklyn. Stealing Raposa's rent money, iPod and security, the three thieves climaxed a year of depression and nomadic, nocturnal dislocation. Not long after the mugging, Raposa completed In The Vines.

If the Castanets' debut, Cathedral (2004) was a road
narrative and First Light's Freeze a malaise of longing,
In The Vines is an attempt to reconcile the fear
of the spaces between the journeys. Says Raposa,
"There is a definite rootlessness. Not so much pursuit
as just waking up somewhere else, then somewhere
else again. I have had to halt production and/or writing
and/or thinking about this album repeatedly due
to actual, incapacitating depressions. Totally crippling.
The bad kind. Off of the road, it's been a pretty
bad year."

Appropriately, the album he was struggling to complete
is based on a Hindu fable about being trapped
in an inescapable fate, with death and the limitations
of our physical lives closing in from all corners. The
story is half of the inspiration for In The Vines. The
other half is the wandering that's typified most of
Raposa's life. From years on the road faking
Greyhound passes, to moving to the Virgin Islands as
a parentless teenaged professional surfer, to keeping
tabs on expatriate journalist parents (father residing
in Saudi Arabia and mother in Mexico), Raposa's life
has been one of back seats and rest stops. In the
fable story, “The Well of Life,” a giant net stretched
out by a giant woman surrounds a Brahman lost in
the forest. The frantic Brahman runs in circles
attempting to escape until he falls halfway down a pit
and is entangled in vines. He discovers some beehives halfway between the flesh-hungry six-faced
elephant at the top of the pit and the waiting serpent
at the bottom. As bees buzz around the Brahman
and rats gnaw at the vines holding him up, all he can
do is gorge on the sweet honey.

Heavy stuff, yes, but it isn't all peril, and darkness.
The songs are sung with such intimacy and earnestness that In The Vines "sways" somewhere between the serpent, elephant, bees and rats, the honey representing a strange sense of hope and delight in the brief moments of beauty that sustain our lives.

THE SOUND
There is community within the music of Castanets,
one that keeps Raposa safe and sane while dangling
in the pit. In this instance we have near- shipwreckmate Jana Hunter, Nonhorse (Vanishing Voice), Rafter Roberts, Nathan Delffs (Shaky Hands), Viking Moses, and Matthew Houck (Phosphorescent). Recently the live Castanets' community has included such folks as good friend and labelmate Sufjan Stevens, Nick Delffs (Shaky Hands), Rob Lowe (Lichens) and Annie Clark (St. Vincent).

This ever shifting cast makes it is necessary to drop
preconceived notions about "bands" and "singersongwriters" when approaching the Castanets.
Castanets is always a "we," no matter if Raposa plays
alone or with dozens. This collaborative effort spawns
a paradoxical sound indebted to both AM Gold and
the idiosyncratic fringes of music theory. He mines
both to reveal treasures. The template may be country
music, but the collective energy conjures up element
of noise, free jazz, black metal and electronic
abstractions. "Following up a Kitty Wells cassette in
the van with a Brotzmann disc or a Lichens disc or
Hot 97” says Raposa.

The album is a snapshot of an extended period of
intense work, devoid of live audience but blessed by
the detritus of players, city, country, ghost audiences,
and improvisations of water, smoke and night. Ray
Raposa is the curator of his own art, seeking out
potential collaborations to infuse the situation with
multiple colors, subdue his ego-rule, and unearth the
song's own personality. Ray Raposa plays music with
folks as an extension of enjoying and eating the
honey.

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