BAND OF THE WEEK: BRAIN RAYS

“Music for Abandoned Beach Parties” is the perfect title for this perfect, thirty-two minute, six-song collection of cosmic thumps courtesy of Brain Rays. Of course, this may depend on your definition of “beach party,” or “ abandoned,” or even “music.”

Of these, “music” is the one least in question. If this is the sound of being abandoned, it’s a friendly, funky way to get freezed out. And if this is the sound of a beach party, it’s fair to say The Potato Bug wouldn’t recognize it (though he’d surely bob his head and wiggle his hips and ride that Brain Rays wave). But this is music. If pressured to describe the music made by Brain Rays, we’d be quick the raise the white flag of surrender, nervously looking downward and mumbling something about “weird synths” and how we know “nothing about hip-hop.”

The good news is no one needs to know anything, define anything to any one; remember, this beach party has been abandoned. There’s no one else around. But there remains a sound, and the echoes of the party remain, revealed and reverberating with grandness and gravity, translated from the dizzy language of late-night longing to the sound of Brain Rays.

“Music for Abandoned Beach Parties” is warm and electric, a thick, cobalt-blue haze of sound from the very beginning of “I Just Dream,” where seagulls crash into the waves of synth-stabs sublime, sucked in and seduced by the beat, the beat, the beat – the everlasting beat. Before you can even begin to wonder where Brain Rays is coming from or where Brain Rays is going, you’re likely to crest and crash as well. We should all be so lucky as to be abandoned. Highest possible recommendation.

“Music for Abandoned Beach Parties” is available now from Bizarre Rituals.

“Desire can be compared to fire. If we grasp fire, what happens? Does it lead to happiness?
If we say, ‘Oh, look at that beautiful fire! Look at the beautiful colors! I love red and orange; they’re my favorite colors,’ and then grasp it, we would find a certain amount of suffering entering the body. And then if we were to contemplate the cause of that suffering we would discover it was the result of having grasped that fire. On that information, we would hopefully, then let the fire go. Once we let fire go then we know that it is something not to be attached to. This does not mean we have to hate it, or put it out. We can enjoy fire, can’t we? It’s nice having a fire, it keeps the room warm, but we do not have to burn ourselves in it.” – Ajahn Sumedho