BONES by Ray McNamara Music

When he isn't holding down the complex afrobeat of Big Mean Sound Machine as their lead guitarist, Ray McNamara tinkers away at his avant-pop solo project, The Ghost of Electricity. His upcoming release, BONES, is distinguished by tUnE-yArDs-esque vocal hooks, thick Dirty Projectors harmonies and Kid A sound collages. But what really sets BONES apart is its beats. Ray samples the sounds of car parts and bones to form the bulk of the music's freaky rhythmic skeleton. It is roughly the percussive palette of Bone Machine Tom Waits, but grooving to a logic foreign to most rock listeners.

BONES marks a leap forward for The Ghost of Electricity. It is a six track conceptual suite, a big-ideas spiritual treatise working within (most) of the boundaries of the three-minute pop song.
The music of BONES is set in a philosophical realm of elemental forces, dark technologies and an indifferent god. The album closes with a blend of Nigerian highlife, Zimbabwean chimurenga, American electric guitar, and electronic sampling of a South American tribe of cannibals singing. It is the joyful musical fulfillment of the lyrics that precede it:

I will play with the kids
Distract them while your flesh is prepared
Keep them happy and laughing
I wear your bones in my hair.

Not for the faint of heart.

raymcnamaramusic.com