The Invisible Rays
Salute the American Popular Song
Boston, MA
Produced by The Invisible Rays // Engineered
and mixed by Rafi Sofer at Q Division Studios
in Cambridge, MA // Mastered by Jeff Lipton at
Peerless Mastering in Boston
Rarely does one come across an album that truly takes you on a emotional and imaginative journey through sea, space and time – much less an instrumental album. Yet STAPS is exactly that, able to find the perfect mix of heavy, fun and cool within its 11-track frame.
Album opener “Dynamation” and “DK Ray” will inspire the simultaneous urges to do the twist and conspire in dangerous espionage before jumping out of an airplane with an umbrella, while the three-part “Submarine” opus is a deep-sea journey of discovery that lets the band’s more progressive influences shine through. The I. Rays forgo the traditional rock singer that would take the focus off of the music and replace him with spoken words samples that may have come from a ‘50s B-movie, old-time radio or perhaps a speech by a recently retired president. Which are you hearing now? That’s part of the intrigue.
Named after a 1936 sci-fi film, the The I. Rays make music that plays out as a deep, yet kitchy speculation on the future, and could easily be used to score a modern sci-fi or spy film.
Indeed, the band’s self-released music videos are mostly composed of re-edited clips from the movies they sample. Using these past predictions, silly as they are, show us that our own expectations are likely to be looked on much the same way when the time comes. So don’t worry about it too much, just enjoy the ride.
(self-released)
Garrett Frierson
www.myspace.com/theinvisiblerays
