- Ricky Eat Acid, one of a handful of solo aliases for Brooklyn resident Sam Ray, is a project interested in the tender and emotional sides of electronic music, or as his SoundCloud profile puts it, "Music that sounds like it's reaching upwards to God and falling short, over and over." His prolific output has kept a similar mindset since it began in 2011, mixing hip-hop-slanted beats with glitchy noise flurries, pockets of synthy ambience and the occasional voice or live instrument. At times it recalls the earnestness of M83's first two albums, and in other places, a few highlights from the early Morr Music catalog (such as Styrofoam and B. Fleischmann).
Without sounding disjointed or unfocused, Context / Walking Around A Garden At Night crams all of the above into seven minutes of mercurial electronic music. To Ray, an ascendant piano melody resonates on the same emotional wavelength as a pitched-up rap vocal, and screeching noise loops belong entangled with quiet string harmonies. Both tracks nicely harness that laissez faire mentality, though neither "Context" nor "Walking…" use it to arrive at any notable destination. It makes sense, then, that Ray is a producer most interested in the journey his music takes, and to that end, the record is surefooted and compelling enough to make you wonder where he will go next.
Tracklist01. Context
02. Walking Around A Garden At Night