Raymond Byron

In a two-decade career, Raymond Byron Magic Raposa has recorded six albums as Castanets, another as Raymond Byron and the White Freighter, and has worked with musicians ranging from Annie Clark (St. Vincent), Matthew Houck (Phosphorescent), and Sufjan Stevens, to Liz Janes, Jana Hunter, Nathan Hubbard (Trummerflora, Cosmologic), and John McCauley (Deer Tick). Over the course of that time, his music has been called part of the new weird America movement, freak-folk, psychedelic folk, and indie folk. Bond Wire Cur is as surreal and desolate and haunting as anything he's done. Collaborators on the album are many (Cory Gray, Erik Clampitt, Pony Domer, Jason Stinson, Lauren K. Newman, Kimba Kuzas, Ron Burns, Paula Barry, Coty Dolores Miranda, Josh Cole), yet the sound of the record is stripped-down and stark. It is a crucial chapter in his career and in ESP-Disk's drive to revive weird rock.

"Strong and weird. Using ancient ingredients these little vignettes grow sneakily large and become some new kind of food. It's beautiful and Ray's finest record yet." - Matthew Houck (Phosphorescent) on Bond Wire Cur.

"Raposa's skill as a singer and a lyricist are inextricably linked. His voice has a drifting, spectral quality that's perfectly suited to his overlapping images. Like John Ashbery, he's able to sustain pointed ambiguity for the duration of a composition, talking all around the thing without saying it." - Brian Howe on Castanets' First Light's Freeze for Pitchfork.