If Ricky Eat Acid‘s prior release, Seeing Little Ghosts Everywhere, was a collection of enchanted places enlightened by adventitious spirits, Ambien Music is the soundtrack of an empty house, haunted by decayed memories. Each movement gradually reveals a calm abyss of languished drone, a space so sparse that minute details seem illuminating and significant. The subtleties of these pieces are products of Sam Ray’s creative process, in which he had gradually morphed the constant tones present throughout the album by haphazardly attacking the .wav files of the layered drones themselves, resulting in deformed replicas of the files’ past selves.

This may be the last release for Sam under the Ricky Eat Acid monicker, or maybe he still has something special up his sleeve. Either way, I’m quite grateful to have something beautiful to drift off to sleep to.

Ambien Music is free (as always) on Ricky Eat Acid’s Bandcamp. Here are a couple from the greater work:

mp3: Ricky Eat Acid: “Ambien Music”

mp3: Ricky Eat Acid: “Ambien Music Three”