It’s been around a year or so since Ted Laderas, who plays electronically enhanced music under the name the OO-Ray, last posted something to his SoundCloud account. Or at least it was until this weekend, when we were treated, out of the blue, to “Floe,” a Renaissance-inspired piece for cello and organ. It moves, per the title, at a stately pace, the classical vibe in play against drone-informed, slightly sour and artfully ambivalent tunings.
Longtime listeners of Laderas will be intrigued by the relatively low density of the track. The individual lines are quite distinct, rather than buried in the trademark OO-Ray shoegaze layering. It may be Laderas’ first public recording in some time, but its openness, the way the lines invite attention and seem firm in their individual presence, feels promising and hopeful, even if the piece is, as he describes it, “slow and haunted.”
Track originally posted at soundcloud.com/ooray. More from Laderas, who is based in Portland, Oregon, at 15people.net. His most recent album is Tiny Fugues, which came out on the Audiobulb label (audiobulb.com) back in July 2018.