Castanets Guy Set to Release 4th Album, Make Your Work-a-Day Existence Look Pitifully Lame

The guy from Castanets continues to live the kind of life I want to have, but never will. The kind of life that unfolds in your imagination with every new detail, looking like it was filmed by the Coen Brothers and scripted by someone less violence-inclined than Cormac McCarthy. The kind of life that makes press releases practically write themselves. Specifically, press releases referring to the fourth studio album from Castanets. According to the one I read before writing this story, the man behind the music, Ray Raposa, reportedly woke up in the backseat of a motor vehicle after an overnight drive from Oakland to Vegas, had a revelation, and decided he was going to record his newest material in a desert motel room.

Entitled City of Refuge and set for release October 7 on Asthmatic Kitty, the album was recorded during a three-week stint at a mom-and-pop motel room in unincorporated Overton, Nevada. Yes, that's right... that Overton, she of two bars, zero traffic lights, and one Lost City Museum. Overton lies on the outskirts of the amazingly-named Valley of Fire State Park (or Moapa Valley to the indigenous tribes living nearby), and it quickly became the center of Castanets' universe. Raposa's City of Refuge also features guest contributions from pals Sufjan Stevens, Jana Hunter, Scott Tuma (Souled American, Boxhead Ensemble, solo), Dawn Smithson (Jessamine, Sunn O)))), solo), and co-producer Ero Gray, added during some post-recording studio wizardry. If you're reading this thinking, "Shoot, all these lost highways and lost cities are seeming a little too faded and American Gothic! I mean, it's summer right now!" well, then you are in luck, because Asthmatic Kitty will also be releasing Dub Refuge, a dub version of the upcoming original. Party on!

And in an effort to make my unemployed Midwestern office-worker life feel even more distant than his epic, Wild Wild West lifestyle, Castanets will also be releasing an album of Hank Williams cover songs in the near future. Sigh. You may have your romantic minstrel life, Mr. Raposa, but I got stoplights. I got LOTS of stoplights.

City of Refuge tracklisting:

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