When writing up Castanets' percussive curve ball "Worn From The Fight (With Fireworks)," I mentioned Ray Raposa's eerie Rafter Roberts-produced Texas Rose, The Thaw, And The Beasts has an…   Read Story »

Castanets, aka Ray Raposa and a shifting cast of collaborators, is about to release Texas Rose, The Thaw, And The Beasts via Asthmatic Kitty, but you won't find his haunting cover of Hank Williams'…   Read Story »

Castanets, aka Ray Raposa and a shifting cast of collaborators, is about to release Texas Rose, The Thaw, And The Beasts via Asthmatic Kitty, but you won't find this haunting cover of Hank Williams'…   Read Story »

Like much of his work, Ray Raposa's eerie batch of songs on the Rafter Roberts-produced Texas Rose, The Thaw, And The Beasts comes with a lonesome, swampy feel: Like everything was recorded in the…   Read Story »

Today's Dark Was The Night track comes to us from a guy named Sufjan Stevens. It's a cover of the Castanets' "You Are The Blood," originally on Ray & rotating Co's 2004 album Cathedral (keeping it in…   Read Story »

Castanets forthcoming third album In The Vines is getting a lot of pre-release play over here. We recently posted Marla Hansen's bug 'n' plane filled cover of "Sway" and now we have ourselves an…   Read Story »

Lots going on in Marla Hansen land. The singing violist releases her Wedding Day EP today, a six-track collection with help from Asthmatic buddies Sufjan Stevens and Shara Worden aka My Brightest…   Read Story »

A couple of weeks ago I ran into Raymond Raposa, a.k.a. Castanets, at Spuyten Duyvil, a beer and wine bar in Brooklyn. Always on the lookout for musicians with day jobs, I asked him a bit about his…   Read Story »