Now That It’s Out, I Recommend the New raymay Single

/ Homicidol Maniac

Dang, release day came and went for raymay, and they haven’t shared out a video, so we may as well have ourselves a good long look at raymay’s newest single. You may rightly recall the rightful embullience toward raymay’s debut, coming late in 2018 but counting as 2019 because of how we do things and already one of the year’s very best and most promising, and their first (very good) single. Here’s the second, now out on the usual streaming platforms:

And now that you’ve taken a few minutes to listen, let’s talk about it!

What a sonic trip! You’d think that a group officially aligned with uijin would do interesting-but-accessible things musically, and you’d be right to think that with raymay — if they’ve shown one thing consistently since their origin, it’s an embrace of soundscapes that complement the song’s point, genre definitions be damned. And for something as genre-disrespectful as idol, that’s really saying something. It wouldn’t surprise you to learn that my favorite track on the record is “set off”, and the reason why is that it involves the most pure rock elements, but that’s on top of that neo-in-toto approach that mixes together various beats, percussive elements with teeth, synths veering between cowardly and aggressive, and, importantly, a vocal melody that recalls the best of idol takes on rock songs.

I wanted to wait for an MV for this disk before I started shooting off my mouth, but it’s a good single, and I hope that it serves to get raymay some additional attention. They were one of the favorites for a big breakout at the turn of the year, only to be have spent the first quarter sort of quietly building to this. Let’s see what’s next!