Castanets
San Diego's Castanets borrow from country, folk, and experimental rock and turn them into a sound that's equally moody and inspiring. The band, which features a revolving cast of supportive musicians (including members from Pinback, Rocket from the Crypt, and Tristeza), centers on singer/songwriter Raymond Raposa, who explored the U.S. for four years via Greyhound bus after testing out of high school at age 15. This searching, traveling nature extends to his music, which he initially released as a series of CD-Rs. However, the Asthmatic Kitty label step...[more]
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Cathedral, the first nationally released album by San Diego's Castanets, introduces a unique new voice of avant-country. From somber love ballads to haunted tales of frustrated redemption, Cathedral illuminates architecture where faith and doubt clash in an often ambiguous search for the divine.
MP3 $10.49
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Cathedral, the first nationally released album by San Diego's Castanets, introduces a unique new voice of avant-country. From somber love ballads to haunted tales of frustrated redemption, Cathedral illuminates architecture where faith and doubt clash in an often ambiguous search for the divine.
CD $12.99
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VINYL FORMAT. Originally released in 2004, this was the debut by a unique voice of avant-country, San Diego's Castanets. Backed by haunting, angelic voices and recorded mostly in a secluded cabin in the northern California woodlands, Cathedral illuminates the dark architecture where faith and doubt clash in an often ambiguous search for the divine. Castanets create music that is epic and inspiring. From somber love ballads to haunted tales of frustrated redemption, the delivery is potent and devoid o [ read more ]
LP $11.99
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An uneasy, asymmetric weave of sung songs, chants, electronic noise solos, and spaghetti western guitar interludes. City Of Refuge suggests a film soundtrack; a narrative propelled by yearning, passion, dislocation, ambiguity, regret, redemption, cryptic symbolism, and other art film obligatories. This is not just music but emotional catharsis. Guest appearances by Jana Hunter, Sufjan Stevens, Dawn Smithson (Jessamine, Sunn O))))), Scot Tuma (Souled American, Boxhead Ensemble), and co-producer Ero Gr [ read more ]
MP3 $10.49
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VINYL FORMAT. An uneasy, asymmetric weave of sung songs, chants, electronic noise solos, and spaghetti western guitar interludes. City Of Refuge suggests a film soundtrack; a narrative propelled by yearning, passion, dislocation, ambiguity, regret, redemption, cryptic symbolism, and other art film obligatories. This is not just music but emotional catharsis. Guest appearances by Jana Hunter, Sufjan Stevens, Dawn Smithson (Jessamine, Sunn O))))), Scot Tuma (Souled American, Boxhead Ensemble), and co-p [ read more ]
LP $12.99
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An uneasy, asymmetric weave of sung songs, chants, electronic noise solos, and spaghetti western guitar interludes. City Of Refuge suggests a film soundtrack; a narrative propelled by yearning, passion, dislocation, ambiguity, regret, redemption, cryptic symbolism, and other art film obligatories. This is not just music but emotional catharsis. Guest appearances by Jana Hunter, Sufjan Stevens, Dawn Smithson (Jessamine, Sunn O))))), Scot Tuma (Souled American, Boxhead Ensemble), and co-producer Ero Gr [ read more ]
CD $12.99
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With First Light's Freeze, Castanets return with a dark mutant-country sound infused with strands of free-jazz and a late-seventies Nashville big-radio strut hijacked by post-post-punk unravelers. The result is a beautiful mix of somber reflection, destination-unknown travelogue, and subversive anti-war boogie. Castanets' unrelenting creative pioneering delightfully befuddles, as they simultaneously honor and dismantle 'New Americana'. While Cathedral explored the themes of domesticity and t [ read more ]
MP3 $10.49
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VINYL FORMAT. With First Light's Freeze, Castanets return with a dark mutant-country sound infused with strands of free-jazz and a late-seventies Nashville big-radio strut hijacked by post-post-punk unravelers. The result is a beautiful mix of somber reflection, destination-unknown travelogue, and subversive anti-war boogie. Castanets' unrelenting creative pioneering delightfully befuddles, as they simultaneously honor and dismantle "New Americana". While Cathedral explored the themes of domes [ read more ]
LP $12.99
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With First Light's Freeze, Castanets return with a dark mutant-country sound infused with strands of free-jazz and a late-seventies Nashville big-radio strut hijacked by post-post-punk unravelers. The result is a beautiful mix of somber reflection, destination-unknown travelogue, and subversive anti-war boogie. Castanets' unrelenting creative pioneering delightfully befuddles, as they simultaneously honor and dismantle "New Americana". While Cathedral explored the themes of domesticity and t [ read more ]
CD $12.99
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Ray Raposa had nearly finished this follow-up to 2005's First Light's Freeze when he was mugged at gunpoint outside his Brooklyn home. This climaxed a year of depression and nomadic, nocturnal dislocation for him. Appropriately, the album 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. But it isn't all darkness and peril; there's a strange sense of hope and delight in the brief moments of beauty th [ read more ]
MP3 $10.49
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VINYL FORMAT. Ray Raposa had nearly finished this follow-up to 2005's First Light's Freeze when he was mugged at gunpoint outside his Brooklyn home. This climaxed a year of depression and nomadic, nocturnal dislocation for him. Appropriately, the album 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. But it isn't all darkness and peril; there's a strange sense of hope and delight in the brief moment [ read more ]
LP $11.99
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Ray Raposa had nearly finished this follow-up to 2005's First Light's Freeze when he was mugged at gunpoint outside his Brooklyn home. This climaxed a year of depression and nomadic, nocturnal dislocation for him. Appropriately, the album 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. But it isn't all darkness and peril; there's a strange sense of hope and delight in the brief moments of beauty th [ read more ]
CD $12.99
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Six Organs of Admittance Dark Noontide, Papercuts Mockingbird, Band Of Horses Everything All The Time