Subscribe
now to receive all the new
music
LEAVING RECORDS releases,
including this album
and 260 back-catalog items,
delivered instantly to you via the Bandcamp app for iOS and Android.
You’ll also get access to
subscriber-only
exclusives.
Learn more.
*cassette comprises the complete Raays Innervzm works
*Innervzm (Side A)
*Innervzm II (Side B)
*lime green cassette shells with white ink
*front & back full-color 6panel foldout JCard featuring the 13 Innervzm Divination Maps illustrated by Ben Luu
Includes unlimited streaming of Innervzm II
via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
Innervzm II, a companion to 2022’s Innervzm, is a sprawling, meditative collection from Los Angeles-based producer, drummer, and sound architect, Raays. The EP’s title derives from a conversation between Raays and Leaving labelmate Deantoni Parks regarding “archeology of self” as a creative methodology. Innervzm, as a concept, connotes the kind of soul work that necessarily precedes and renders outward action possible, meaningful, and effective. The Innervzm II EP blends musique concréte, field recordings, and improvisational synthesis, documenting Raays’ methodical, ritualistic, and materially grounded approach to composition.
Each of the EP’s six tracks was seeded by a discrete instance of deep listening (of the Pauline Oliveros variety) in environments ranging from Raays’ own backyard of Ernest Debs Pond to the thundery night time forestscapes of Michoacán. If regarded sincerely as the ever-present music of this world, how might a listener interpret the spatial and melodic interplay of, say, birdsong and the distant hum of traffic? And how might that same listener respond, musically? Innervzm II provides one such example: a keen spirit, intermittently (generally for no more than ten minutes at a time) tuning into the sonic chaos, deciphering the elements (for it is only ever really seemingly chaos), then immediately distilling this experience into song. Aided by an hourglass (as much a talisman as an actual timekeeper), and abiding by a sort of “first thought / best thought” approach to completing a track in a single sitting, Innervzm II constitutes a snapshot of an artist in an especially fruitful and transitory period of exploration.
As a self-described “optimistic futurist,” the tapestry Raays weaves is indeed soothing and consoling, deftly melding the organic and the analog. A persistent albeit oscillating flutter on “Beneath Your Surface” suggests the slow-motion beating of a hummingbird’s wings. The subtle warble hidden within the EP’s opener, “Equiinox” conjures the rainbow artifacts of a VHS sunrise. Though “textural message” is the title of track five, these pieces might very well all be considered textural messages, replete as they are in soil and static, dredged (lovingly) from some place just beyond the frame of knowing.
Innervzm (dubbed “Full of vibrant life” by New Age luminary Laraaji) will be paired with Innervzm II for a joint physical cassette release in June, and Raays will soon join longtime experimental/ambient luminary, The Album Leaf, as an opener and drummer on a global tour. Which is all to say, Raays is diligently tending the garden, to our collective benefit.
credits
released June 2, 2023
all songs written and recorded by Raays
mixed and mastered by Raays
illustration and visual design by Ben Luu
aaronraays aka RAAYS is a producer, multi-instrumentalist, and sound architect, always approaching music through a lens of
curiosity. It’s from this intuitive sense of wonder he synthesizes earthly fragments with cosmic soundscapes, reflecting it all back as shimmering ambient, experimental jazz and radiant left-field electronic beat music ~ space jungle ...more
Just discovered Sam Wilkes and some of his work and bass playing, and arrived to this record. It reminds me a lot to John Hassell/Eno era a bit more jazzy, and all the ambient music from the 80’s. I love it! Santi Umbert
This album is such a fun combination of styles and and immensely satisfying listen. Danceable with plenty of room to breathe and helps me focus too. Glad I got the cassette bc it sounds extra gooey. Can't wait to hear more from Xyla :) caramobazgo
Composer, artist, and 12k label founder Taylor Deupree collaborates with Joseph Branciforte to reimagine his own seminal album. Bandcamp New & Notable Apr 6, 2024
Currently sitting at my favourite local beach, the tide is out and the huge skyscape is full of clouds. Listening to this album it feels like Nico wrote it with my current view in mind. No favourite track for me as I tend to regard the whole body of work as one piece broken up into sections. If mindfulness was a sound, this would be it. Yggdrasil_music