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Castanets Make Athens Their New Friend

by Whitney Snell
03/08/2007



Raymond Raposa will do anything to keep his music fresh: he has toured on a sailboat, written a novel that became an album and is the only consistent member of his band Castanets (MySpace. Now the artist known for defying and combining genres is almost ready to release a new album on Sufjan Stevens' label, Asthmatic Kitty.

Raposa called from the studio in San Diego where he and his friends were completing their last day of recording. He was carrying a heavy amp and warned that his lack of sleep might muddle our conversation. When I asked his age, he paused and said, "If it's 2007, then I'm 26."

He got his first acoustic guitar at age 13 after moving to Mexico with his mom. A couple years later, he was living in San Diego, going to hardcore shows and admiring bands like Crossed Out and Dropdead. He competed as a surfer until the money he was earning threatened his love of the sport. When he was 17 he fled from sponsors and photographers to the Virgin Islands for some time to regroup.

He returned to San Diego and began concentrating on music. "I was living here with my girl and my rabbit," Raposa said. "My girl at the time and my rabbit at the time."

At age 21, he and his friend Nathan Delffs (formerly of Album Leaf) bunkered down in a basement and recorded their first album. Asthmatic Kitty keeps trying to release it but Raposa keeps resisting. He continued to develop his brand-defying style while playing with friends Liz Janes and Rafter Roberts of Bunky, both also on Asthmatic Kitty. His first released CD, Cathedral, came from a novel he'd written in notebooks. He abandoned his book but not his characters, allowing them to live on in his folk songs.

As if inadvertently affirming his individuality, Raposa was reluctant to name any musical influences.

"People always ask that and I get stumped every time," he said. "I don't listen to that much music that ends up having an effect on the music I make. It's not fun for me to listen to music and approach it with a 'what can I get from this' kind of aspect. It's ideally not a platform for me to draw from."

Last Summer Raposa decided to tour the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway on a sailboat with Jana Hunter and Peter and the Wolf. They knew a man with a boat and an authentic eye patch, and, as Raposa said, "He has as many qualifications for a pirate as I would require." The musicians played intimate acoustic shows in various ports for about a week until the boat suddenly crashed into a buoy at 4 A.M.

"We almost sunk. We almost died," Raposa said with a chuckle. "But it was so hot, smelled so bad, and we ate such bad food; it was kind of just sensory overload."

In addition to unconventional tours, Raposa keeps his live shows interesting by recruiting new musicians to play with every time. "I've got friends I wanna hang out with for three weeks, so I invite them to play," he said. "It's a way of keeping the songs fresh."

The Castanets' current tour kicked off March 5, and Raposa said he will be bringing along a bigger band than Athens has seen him with before. In addition to the standard guitars, basses, and drums, he will also have synths and a friend mixing cassettes. "It will be a lot more representative of our capabilities," he said.

Yet another creative condition of Castanets is that they rarely use a set list. "If you go into something with that secure of a notion of your intent, without taking into consideration the conditions of that room and that time, you're being kind of deceptive," Raposa said.

When asked about the new album, he mumbled modestly: "It's not a totally radical breakthrough, but... there's a couple of songs on there... I enjoy it." He listed some of the album's contributors such as Matthew Houck (Phosphorescent), Viking Moses, Rafter Roberts, and Sufjan Stevens. "It's a lot less lonely when you've got more people around you," he said.

Castanets will play at the Caledonia Lounge on Saturday, March 10 with Count and Shapes and Sizes.