Long before Ra Ra Riot performed a single note of its dancetronic third album, Beta Love (Barsuk), the band talked at great length about the need for a change. The viscerally charged chamber-pop outfit had maintained a steady course after the tragic 2007 drowning death of beloved drummer John Pike, blossomed on its 2008 Barsuk full-length debut, The Rhumb Line, and flourished with a variety of subsequent beatkeepers, but everyone felt the inevitable tug of creative evolution after 2010 sophomore album The Orchard. The roles of violinist Rebecca Zeller and guitarist Milo Bonacci changed the most dramatically; with the dominance of the synthesizer on Beta Love, Bonacci was forced to radically reimagine/rewrite his guitar contributions and take on more expansive sonic duties, while Zeller was freed up to explore new approaches with her instrument and the spare strings the band utilized. Bassist Mathieu Santos will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our brand new Ra Ra Riot feature.
Santos: I picked one of these little guys up for a good friend of mine after having played around with one in a local shop. It’s an incredibly simple machine, created by a duo of Chinese musicians; it’s a small, plastic box with a speaker, a headphone jack, a volume control, a pitch control and one button. It plays long loops of ambient music, which you can manipulate crudely with the volume and pitch dials, and you can push the lone button to advance to the next loop. It’s amazingly economical in its design and function, and there are now four different versions available, all of which come pre-loaded with different music. Cool!
Video after the jump.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHHv6wh9DJU
