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Rayographs have carved out their own distinctive sound which taps into a dark shimmering psychedelia: blue like petrol, kaleidoscopic with flecks of colour throughout. The songs have an odd timeless quality that yearn for absent cinematic visuals. Swooping, atmospheric vocals, stream-of-consciousness vignettes encased in 60s garage hooks. A heady and eclectic mix of sonic, visual, and literary influences contribute to the Rayographs’ sound, notably The Pixies, David Lynch, 60s Psychedelia, Can, Angelo Badalamenti, Patti Smith, Francesca Woodman, Shellac, Nick Cave, Derek Jarman, Raymond Carver and Eugene O’Neill. This melting pot of ideas has resulted in a sound rich in imagination with a blues tinge, that has become galvanised in studios and on stage, quietly and carefully honing their craft to produce a body of work that is uniquely their own.

Rayographs self-titled debut album was recorded by legendary underground producer John Hannon at a studio in a farm in Essex. The record is dense in its variety, shifting from urgent riffs in "Marazion" to the nightmarish, hollowed out 60s pop of "Space of the Halls", to the somnambulistic looped narrative of "Falconberg Court". "Providence, Rhode Island" is a song for Francesca Woodman, "Cartwheels" about Nan Donohoe, an Irish traveller In between the songs display the poetry of individual experience. This lyric from "My Critical Mind", could be said to sum up the album, 'there is no order of things, just a sequence of illuminated events embedded in memory'; as if the stories depicted are both conscious and unconscious revelations undulating both within and below the songs, timeless in their universality but at the same time deeply personal in their biographical fortitude.

'Invoking the restless blues spirit of proto-riot grrrl heroines in the mould of Patti Smith as well as the dreamy tremblings of The Breeders, (Rayographs) provide demure elegance in a sea of grubby punks, with pummelling rhythms strewn with forlorn, waif-like voices and surging progressive chords'. NME.

STAFF COMMENTS

Laura says: After a couple of great singles, Rayographs bring us their debut album. A collection of post-punkish, psyche-tinged songs, that draw on a whole host of influences that start at Patti Smith, and follow through to The Breeders, Throwing Muses and beyond. Moody, dramatic, and well worth a listen.

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