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Standout Track: No. 3, “Inside my house; some place I keep dreaming about.” A January release that feels appropriately frigid, Three Love Songs is the new album from College Park ambient-electronic artist Sam Ray, aka Ricky Eat Acid. “Inside my house” sounds like a fleeting island dream; there’s no beat or sense of momentum. It’s here for two minutes and then it ends, dropping us right back in the dead of winter as soon as the final notes fade out.
Musical Motivation: “Inside my house; some place I keep dreaming about” is fueled by Ray’s fascination with minimalism. “I love albums where really talented musicians who work in a more maximal element sometimes scale back to the most essential parts of a composition,” he says, referencing composers Akira Kosemura and Sylvain Chauveau as two primary influences.
The Ghost Writer: Three Love Songs is a misleading name, as the album is actually 12 tracks long, but it comes from the title of a piece of writing that a friend passed along to Ray, 22. He says the work’s theme and narrative arc deeply influenced his record. “It’s three poems, a triptych, and it encompassed the feelings of loss through the album,” he says. “The idea you have to love something to feel loss or you have to lose. The album became concerned with that underlying theme and brought it to the front.”
Listen to “Inside my house; some place I keep dreaming about” below.