The first week of June gave us Haunt U Forever, Ricky Eat Acid‘s tenth release since May of 2010, yet with his strides in experimentation between EPs the familiarity I hold onto exists in the underlying character of Sam Ray‘s music. Rich in texture and with clear intent, Sam has the fingerprint of a young man curious for experiencing the diversity of his craft as he actively explores new methods in producing and recording his sounds.
Seeing Little Ghosts Everywhere, released today, finds progress in documenting sounds representative of time and place as an audio journal. Recorded through the summer the album casually carries themes of intimacy and isolation that are the bread and butter of my personal winter listening, and Sam has shared with us a document of his own person so gorgeous it’s liable to be worn and adorned as a necklace resting just over the heart; but that’s just what we’re personally doing with our cassette. It was a pleasure to take the time to chat with Sam about his new record, and be the lovely voice that presents to you… Seeing Little Ghosts Everywhere. Download the album for free and/or order a cassette right here.
FMLY: Your new album, Seeing Little Ghosts Everywhere, is such a welcome surprise in the Ricky Eat Acid saga. What was the recording process like?
Sam: Thank you! I’m so glad it’s welcomed because it might strike some people who have only heard select songs as pretty different. This past summer I was really fed up with the music I had been working on, so I began recording songs to my tape player for fun. They were originally under a different name, kind of a joke, and I played them for friends in online listening rooms and in my real room in ‘real’ life. I have a huge section of my heart, stomach and lungs reserved for ambient and drone music as well as piano compositions and field recordings… that kinda stuff, but I’m not sure if that had been represented in my music. I eventually gave up on the album I was already in the midst of recording and devoted my summer to finishing this project. So that’s basically what I did from May through August, in my room, after everyone else had gone to bed. Sometimes I’d sit outside during the rain and record on my porch, or other people’s houses. These songs aren’t outlets for any particular emotion, and are instead like a diary… each one has some story, or person, or place, or moment in time tied to it. In that way it is the most personal album I have shared.
FMLY: Every piece of this tape is such a warm and intimate experience, which instruments did you find yourself drawn to?
Sam: Seeing Little Ghosts Everywhere was recorded with a handful of toy instruments I’ve collected like old toy keyboards, toy pianos, some guitars, pianos, etc… as well as some help from my computer. Everything was recorded directly to my tiny tape player I picked up from an estate sale. The idea behind the full project is to have a series of pieces that can exist in their own little world. I hope that when you listen to them alone at night in the dark with your eyes closed they can be in their own delicate dreamworld… I just became filled with this incredible wanderlust where I wanted to journey through the Super Nintendo RPGs that I loved as a kid.
It’s difficult for me to mesh ‘real’ instruments with ‘electronic’ textures because I don’t own any microphones, an interface, Logic, Pro Tools, or anything at all really. If i record something it’s going to sound really bad – fidelity wise – and when I work on electronic music lately I’ve been trying to move away from lo-fi to a much more produced sound. Recording everything to tape really changed this experience, with this album I was able to mix weird electronic drones and textures with recorded guitars and keyboards, pianos, and have them all come out sounding about the same. The tracks were able to melt together into this one big blob of oozy mono static and I love it. Since recording this album I’ve been playing with more hi-fi sounds by recording instruments with my tape player and then mixing them, static and all, into programs where I can chop, cut, and rearrange everything into much more substantial songs.
FMLY: The vocal samples are scarce on this album, can you tell me about the role you feel they play?
Sam: I think all, or most, of the samples were found through different Youtube videos… mainly interviews. I was spending a lot of time discovering pieces that, when removed from their context, could symbolize beauty in radical difference. I ended up finding clips on near death experiences, ads for treating depression and videos of dental procedures. There were originally more samples, but I really liked how minimal it became once I removed them. I’m working with a lot of vocal samples currently, but they are my own recordings of conversations among friends.
FMLY: Your releases have entirely been shared through either your hands or the nurturing of great friends. Has the process of producing this cassette been different from previous collections?
Sam: Actually this is pretty much the same process! My friend Matt Adler has been incredibly supportive through the whole process and at least once a week we’d meet in some random listening room so I could show him the new songs I’d recorded for the project. When I finished, he was the first person that I played the whole album for. We brainstormed a lot of ideas for how to release it and my favorite was one my friend Adam Ward came up with. He proposed we make a limited run of one USB drive and shoot them into space on a homemade rocket. I hope that someday before I die I can actually do that. After the music was finished we decided to do a really limited run of tapes, but that’s a little tricky since neither of us can dub tapes ourselves or afford a professional. Luckily my amazing friend Warren Hildebrand, who i’d previously sent the album to, offered to dub the tapes for us. So after a few months of getting everything sorted out we have them ready… twenty tapes each with a unique cover, made out of photos I’ve taken that kind of mirror the music on the album. For the release, along with a free Bandcamp download, my friend Tom Auty created a beautiful website for the album. It’s a pixel art landscape which shifts from day to night in real time!
FMLY: GORGEOUS! Now what’s up with the album you put on hold for this project?
Sam: I’ve been working on a ‘real’ Ricky Eat Acid LP for over a year now, and it’s really hard. My approach changes and I enjoy working with different styles, so what I have so far has become such a strange mix of music that really makes no sense together. I’ve never been able to understand how musicians are able to just pick one style and stick with it because I never feel like I’m personally evolving as a musician unless I push myself. Sometimes this works out well and sometimes it fails miserably [and publicly], but that’s okay.
FMLY: You mentioned earlier that Seeing Little Ghosts Everywhere was originally recorded under a new alias. I’m curious where this desire comes from and why you ended up sticking with Ricky Eat Acid.
Sam: While I was working on the ‘Ricky Eat Acid’ LP I began recording these songs as Teen Mom Birthday Cake. My friend Colleen suggested a lot of names for the ‘new’ project and I liked that one the best. Haunt U Forever was the same way, I had just finished a long series of ambient works as well as the nine track EP in about five days under a joke name for my friends. I find working under a new, or fake, identity frees my music from feeling like it has to sound like anything in particular and thus the songs can kind of manifest on their own. These projects under fake names often end up with a really distinctive and binding style throughout because they aren’t trying to sound like what I think a Ricky Eat Acid song should sound like.
FMLY: Anything else you want to share?
Sam: Thanks Tom, thanks Warren and thanks Matt! Thank you to everyone who helped with the sharing of this.
FMLY: Thank You!
sam ray is slow magic!