temple on the water

Isotopes Win!

ー闇駆ー基地消滅まであと5分_Escape quickly!

ー使命交錯ー語りかける寒風_The cold breeze speaks

Mellow Hammer

Night Moves

Unsympathetic Spot - 4

All music written, recorded and performed by Ryan J Raffa in Taipei, Taiwan during late 2021 on moog matriarch, modular, fender rhodes, snare drums, cymbals, percussion, op1, tape machines, and field recorders.

Every sound was captured for this specific occasion

Mastering by Taylor Deupree
Vinyl cut by Barry "Baza" Grint at Alchemy
Layout by Drew Heffron
Photographs by Ryan J Raffa

4 e and a is about the infinite spaces between. As a classically trained percussionist, Raffa sat in front of a metronome for the majority of their life. And in their mind, they would play with the spaces between those clicks. In especially challenging times, Ryan would attempt to expand and stretch those spaces into forever. Just existing in the between. This record is about these moments (and places) when we are living in those infinite spaces.

That time of intense musical focus was also Ryan's first introduction to an analog synthesizer. As a teenager, their drum teacher was Herb Flower, an incredible human with light beams of creative energy pouring out of him and his musical family at all times. A parent of another student of Mr. Flower’s was an electrical engineer who had recently been laid off during large cutbacks at Carrier, one of the major employers at that time in Syracuse where Raffa grew up. This parent, with their newly acquired free time, hand-built a drum machine, housed in a large wooden cabinet with 8 or so unmarked knobs, and they gave this synthesizer to Mr. Flower. The sound from that machine was glorious. And Mr. Flower, their drum teacher, would turn a few knobs, make a pattern and have me play along with it during rehearsal. These moments were such a gift, and I know those moments are still reverberating today. Raffa thinks about that time of experimentation, of exploration, of shared love of sound and music as a place that they can go to, a place we can all go to, whenever we choose.

4 e and a

Spirits Of Menghuanhu

Out Now: "faraway" by zxmablue & timesgone. Available on all streaming platforms.

timesgone @mysummerends
zxmablue @zxmablue

Spotify

faraway

DarKYYComet - Too Good To Be True (Free Download)

Disulate - that little thing

Gonna blow up this page soon and start all over...got some new 2025 stuff I'm working on that's gonna set it off...Stay Tuned

Isotopes Win!

Life4M