Scot Ray - steel guitars, devices, tape effects, beats

to explore, thinker-tinker, the signal and what’s behind it. to brood without a subject and wrap melodies, nomadic, in a “gauzy veil of hums, clicks, whirs and crackling…data-mining the noise floor…turning bits into atmospheres”(cascone). to coax the neural ear, somnium, down the primrose path, exposing the glimmers in the mineral, bit-space hypnogogic, tape unfurling, a phantasmata in a house of leaves.

"Scot Ray’s improvisations for lap and pedal steel sit blissfully between intersections, reveling in inconstancy; his guitar tone chatters with sliding artifacts, over-unders of warp and weft, passages that fizzle quickly into the decaying signals of his effect chains. Hypnogogic, Ray’s first release of 2021, unites a collection of his experiments with a complement of brooding beats and waves of colorful noise that twinkle and squawk like birdsong. Each track spirals through new moods at a tight, yet effortlessly natural pace: “Somnium”’s thick stutters of rewound kick drums and tape hiss cut brightly through the piece’s wistful, stilted refrain before giving way to an ethereal wash of high-pitched glitching guitar glissando. “Glimmers in the Mineral,” my favorite piece here, is similarly enchanting, a fuzzy parade of melancholic motifs that bleed into one another—watercolor portraits of sullen faces, deep hues that fade and migrate to the edge of the canvas: on several occasions, it’s been enough to bring me to tears. I’m not always aware of why certain music makes me cry, but with Hypnogogic, the sensation is acute: through Ray’s fearless improvisations, I feel as though I’ve been granted the permission to explore, to be lost, to dive in and be messy. The work is inspiring in that it makes a point out of pointlessness, the journey-as-destination; beginnings and endings become immaterial, filed down until only forward motion remains. Existence, raw, unfiltered, becomes sacrosanct: in Hypnogogic and in life, every moment is worth capturing." —Maxie Younger, Toneglow

"This week, I listened to Scot Ray’s new album Hypnogogic for the first time. Its style of improv, which incorporates any and every sound in service of the album’s beauty and catharsis, feels liberatory and freeing." - Reel Deep Radio

Mix and Cover Collage by S.