Zenon Slawinski – The Beginning Of Time
Sonic Thee – Speaker
Pilesar – Every Blade of Grass
The Moderate – Conversation
Teen Mom – Boyfriends
Mark Sylvester – Pulse (In 7)
Fields Burning – Joy’s Desire
Miyazaki – Opportunist
Eddie From Ohio – Mimosas In Missouri
Projekt Eins – Virtuoso
Hayley Fahey – Tuesday Morning
Azure Vox – The Best Part
Bellfount – You Still Love Me (Instrumental)
Jon Camp – Interrupted Transmission
Bells and Hunters – Sense of Time
Astronaut Jones – Farther
Rumpole – Just BDF
Ricky Eat Acid – Can You See Its Bloom
Young Rapids – Melt
Terrill Mast – Venetian Corridors

Stranger In the Alps – Love/Afraid
Martyn – Fashion Skater
Suzanne Brindamour – Fireflies
Timothy Soller – Water and Light
Miyazaki – Torrents
Projekt Eins – Vacillate-Venerate
The Shifters – She’s So Fine
Aaron Agre – Stormglass
Young Rapids – Singing World
Feedel Band – Ethiopian Ocean (Live At WAMU)
Klauss – Mixer
Peals – Koan 1
Borracho – Redemption
Ricky Eat Acid – Big Man’s Last Trip Outside
Vandaveer – The Knoxville Girl
aerialist – proteus
ZOMES – Beckoning Breeze
Flash Frequency – Corner of The Room
Bonjour, Ganesh! – Tito
Diamond District – Back to Basics Instrumental

Iritis – Monster
Justin Jones – You Saved Me
Protect-U – Down the Tubes
Fugazi – Recap Modotti
Mark Meadows – Once Upon a Purple Night
The Greatest Hoax – Opus no. 13
Mimi Loco and the Drama Queens – Let It Die – 2015 Remix – Take 2
Ricky Eat Acid – Driving Alone Past Roadwork At Night
Troy and Paula Haag – 27
John Hogge – Shanai
Beach House – Myth
Jonathan Parker – King of the Hill
The Funk Ark – Mind Meld
Future Islands – Tin Man
AXB – Quantum Chill
The Mean Season – Kurtz
Matt Chaconas – Spear
Domingues & Kane – Wko 205
PLOY – Beyond the Plain
Noah Berman + Louis Weeks – radius i

Dawit Eklund, Ouroborous
Recommended tracks: “Litchi Juice,” “Lies Are Chic (Makeshift Mix)”

So far, stout head-nodders haven’t been the domain of D.C. electronic label 1432 R, but imprint co-founder Dawit Eklund maximizes the 4/4 energy on “Litchi Juice,” and keeps it bubbling on two versions of “Lies Are Chic.” But don’t view Ouroborous as a departure from 1432R’s heavily Ethiopian vibe (see: E.R., Mikael Seifu). Instead, it’s a complement: All those Horn of Africa sounds have been filtered with American house freakitude in one small way or another, and this EP proudly flaunts those roots. (Joe Warminsky)

Ricky Eat Acid, “Dear Lord”
Recommended track: The only track, “Dear Lord”

Former calzone delivery guy Sam Ray, aka producer Ricky Eat Acid, has always liked futzing around: The Maryland native (who also plays with Teen Suicide and Julia Brown) started out diddling with pop and hip-hop, then graduated to thinky ambient works on his debut Three Love Songs, titling his compositions with long, vague phrases (“Driving alone past roadwork at night”; “God puts us all in the swimming pool”). Ricky Eat Acid’s latest track, “Dear Lord,” throws hooky hip-hop, techno tropes and piano chords into a Magic Bullet and watches them whirl. (Ally Schweitzer)

Future Times Records’ Vibe 3
Recommended tracks: Protect-U, “Krums,” Juju & Jordash, “Soggy Bottom,” DSR.MR, “Crystal Jungle”

Like a lot of Future Times releases, the vinyl version of the new compilation Vibe 3 is already sold out (one retailer allowed one per customer). For most of us, though, those “out of stock” notices don’t matter, because the label made these goods highly accessible on the digital tip. (The Internet hasn’t always been a priority for the Vibe series.) Considering the Future Times crew’s knack for sequencing tracks, the digi flow makes more sense, anyway: 14 cuts, a global outlook (the crew extends from Vancouver to Amsterdam at this point), tons o’ bliss and myriad lessons about popped percussion and manipulated frequencies. Lay ’em end to end. (JW)

The Walking Sticks, “The News”
Recommended track: The only track, “The News”

The Walking Sticks started as a folk-pop band. You wouldn’t know it from the Maryland trio’s new single, “The News,” a squelching earworm with singer Chelsea Lee crushing — crushing! — the vocals. The single is officially out Nov. 20 on Play Me Records. (AS)

Brett, On Account Of Your Love
Recommended track: “On Account Of Your Love (Club Mix)”

Originally based in the D.C. area, Brett now operates out of Los Angeles, which seems like the right spiritual home for the group’s bittersweet synth-pop. On Account Of Your Love is Brett’s latest EP, released on L.A.’s Chill Mega Chill label, which promises a vinyl edition next year. Also coming in 2016: Brett’s sophomore LP, the followup to their 2014 self-titled debut. Look out for that March 11 on Cascine. (AS)

Benoit & Sergio, “Dancing Shoes”/”Old Streets”
Recommended track: “Old Streets”

Benoit & Sergio, the globe-hopping party boys who started in D.C., return with two low-key house concoctions. Like earlier tracks “Walk and Talk” and “New Ships,” their vocals still ooze drowsy sleaze — the kind you might encounter in the last hour of an after-afterparty. The 12-inch is out Nov. 17 on Soul Clap and digital versions are available now on Spotify, iTunes and Beatport. (AS)

Brutalism, No Rave
Recommended track: “Friday Night”

One of the more absurd new groups out of D.C., Brutalism keeps its tongue firmly in cheek. Debut single “Friday Night” was a deceptively peppy murder ballad; “New Empire” pledged allegiance to a draconian political regime. But on the trio’s new tape, No Rave, Brutalism takes the insanity down a notch with a track we haven’t heard before: “Human Being.” (AS)

Other new local music: The latest from rock groups More Humans, Swings, Polyon and The Split Seconds.

Now add Houston, Texas, record label and website Funeral Sounds to Casa Ruby’s list of supporters: The outlet is getting ready to release a benefit compilation for the organization, featuring tunes from D.C.-area acts Two Inch Astronaut, Ricky Eat Acid, Tomato Dodgers, Holy Crust, Teen Suicide and Night Kitchen, in addition to songs from nonlocal bands.

One highlight from the bunch: Two Inch Astronaut’s chaotic cover of Taylor Swift’s “Fifteen.” (Stream it below.)

Funeral Sounds has been slowly unveiling some of the comp’s songs over the last couple of weeks, but the release formally drops June 6. All proceeds go toward Casa Ruby.

Monday, the former D.P. Dough delivery guy performs one of his biggest local shows yet: a slot at Black Cat opening for his tourmate, buzzy Canadian R&B artist Jessy Lanza. It’s all a major change from a couple of years ago, when Ray’s various bands were kicking off six-band bills at house shows.

“I’m constantly being like, ‘My life is absurd,'” says Ray, 22.

Three Love Songs is Ricky Eat Acid’s debut album, but it’s hardly Ray’s first release under that name, or others for that matter. It can be tough to keep track of all of his projects. These days he’s mostly focused on lo-fi pop outfit Julia Brown, recently reunited punk group Teen Suicide, and Ricky Eat Acid, which he transformed into a live act with the help of Orchid Tapes co-honcho Warren Hildebrand (who also performs as Foxes in Fiction).

Ray might say that being in a lot of bands tops going to college—something he hasn’t yet found a taste for.

In 2009, he dropped out of SUNY Purchase after one semester. Next he worked a string of odd jobs till he tried school again at University of Maryland Baltimore County in the fall of 2012. That stint lasted a couple of weeks.

“I spent a whole three months of fall pretending I was in college so my parents wouldn’t freak out,” Ray says. Meanwhile, he was “going to hang out in the woods every day.” His time among the trees gave him new ideas for music projects. “It definitely inspired a lot of trying to make songs that sounded like what walking around there felt like,” he says. Those are the tracks that appear on Three Love Songs, which possesses a strong naturalistic ambiance: the bubbling synths on “Big man’s last trip outside” (stream it below) sound like water rushing over pebbles in a wooded creek.

Last summer Ray took a job as a delivery driver for the calzone spot in College Park. Conveniently, he worked alongside his musical collaborators, which made it easy to schedule practices, and his odd hours dovetailed with his sometimes unusual, freewheeling artistic impulses. But his delivery schedule kept getting in the way of meeting the growing demand for his music.

So shortly before Three Love Songs came out, Ray dropped the calzones and got to work.

* * *

Three Love Songs is a comforting and rapturous ambient album that floats on ethereal synths, gentle glitches and blips and fuzzy field recordings that sometimes sound like they were recorded through a pillow. The album captures the feeling of taking a twilight ride down an endless highway surrounded by trees, resting your head against a passenger window and getting lost in a blur of car lights and tree branches. The intimate album retains its warmth even as it edges towards discord, or when it transitions into the hazy, post-house pulse of “In my dreams we’re almost touching.” That track (stream it below) centers on a woeful, watery sample of a cover of Drake’s “Take Care.”

Long before he found experimental ambient music, Ray started with Bible songs. He began toying with music around age 5 while growing up in Maryland’s Howard County. “I learned how to play piano from this weird—I don’t know what it is. It’s like a child’s book of biblical hymns, and it had an interactive piano you could hit the notes on. It was just one octave, and it’s like, ‘Here’s how you play ‘We Three Kings’ and [stuff],” he says. “We had a piano in my house and I started translating it.”

Ray picked up guitar in middle school and formed a two-piece punk group called Defenestration with his friend Antonio Janifer, who played drums. “We played once at our mutual friend’s birthday party in her backyard,” he says. “We weren’t supposed to play and no one was happy that we did. And that was the end of that.”

Around the same time Ray got into making punk music, he began dabbling in electronic sounds. He came up with the name “Ricky Eat Acid” shortly after graduating high school in 2009, taking it from a note he hastily wrote his mom before going on a drive with his friend Ricky, who was tripping at the time. He’s since cranked out more than a dozen releases under that name, most of them digital: the project’s Bandcamp page offers a snapshot of his prodigious output.

I got hooked on Ray’s music after hearing the gritty, nine-track Haunt U Forever, which microlabel Chill Mega Chill released on cassette in 2011. From then on, I came across Ray’s music even when I wasn’t looking for it. I discovered Teen Suicide through a punk blog and got hooked on the group’s ragged, shambolic emo-leaning punk before I realized Ray was in the band. He says the group started in 2011 as “an excuse to travel to places and do stuff,” and broke up in 2012.

Julia Brown’s debut, To Be Close To You, came out in February last year. A couple of months later, Pitchfork gave it a sterling 7.9 rating.

After he quit the D.P. Dough gig, Ray found time to put into projects like working on more Julia Brown material. Sometimes, recording took up whole days. “I remember I made dinner ’cause I hadn’t eaten for nine hours,” he says. “I was eating a slice of pizza with one hand and recording piano with the other at the same time, and trying to eat really quietly.”

All the while he kept working on Ricky Eat Acid material and anything else he desired—including resurrecting Teen Suicide. “We were gonna do it as a joke once just to kind of [mess] with people,” Ray says. But it just started to feel too good. “All of us that played it we were like, ‘Holy [hell], this was really fun and reinvigorating in a way that music hasn’t felt in a long time, so let’s do that until it stops feeling that way.'”

Ray says this is the way he needs to work: in multiple places at once, his brain firing off in crazy directions. “I’d rather go back to being a delivery boy… [making] music that I think matters to me on the side, and not care if anyone hears it, than focus all my time and energy into something that isn’t rewarding.”

Some people have advised Ray to make Teen Suicide his priority, saying it’s his best shot at a career in music. But he’s not interested being a one-band man.

“If I was just doing one thing I’d get burned out,” he says, “whereas this is really fun, [and] I want to just keep bouncing around like a pinball game.”

Second photo by Nick Hughes

Megafaun and Grandma Sparrow
Thursday, May 1 at DC9, $14

Before Justin Vernon recorded as Bon Iver, he was in a Wisconsin indie-rock band called DeYarmond Edison. Vernon’s three former DeYarmond Edison bandmates, now based in Durham, North Carolina, are the psychedelic rock band Megafaun. Merging vocals reminiscent of Fleet Foxes with off-kilter instrumentation and a lo-fi aesthetic, the trio might not be quite as famous as their former bandmate, but Megafaun’s folk/post-rock style is well worth hearing. Opening the show is the psychedelic Grandma Sparrow.

Nakatani Gong Orchestra
Friday, May 2 at tBack Alley Theater, $12

Friday, acoustic sound artist Tatsuya Nakatani leads a group of 11 local musicians in a large gong ensemble. These instruments, both bowed and struck with mallets, produce a sound both melodic and percussive; Nakatani’s last visit to D.C. saw him performing at the Kennedy Center, so the DIY feel of the Back Alley Theater will give this ensemble quite a different feel. Preceding the ensemble performance, Nakatani will perform a solo percussion set.

The Whigs and Nikki Lane
Friday, May 2 at Rock & Roll Hotel, $15

Athens-based garage rock band The Whigs blend their noisy riffs with some serious pop-influenced hooks—not surprising influences for a band that’s toured with acts ranging from Kings of Leon to Band of Skulls. The fuzz and distortion that permeates their music is perfect for a sweaty Friday night. Opener Nikki Lane has a distinct country point of view; her sassy twang is reminiscent of early Neko Case.

The Funk Parade
Saturday, May 3 on U Street NW; free

Coordinated by the folks behind Listen Local First, the inaugural Funk Parade is an all-day street festival with a participatory parade (from their web site: “Get up, get into it, get involved!”), dance performances and workshops. At night, the funk moves into many of U Street’s top music venues—DC9, Tropicalia,  U Street Music Hall, Patty Boom Boom, and Twins Jazz, among others—with free-admission performances by performers including Cheick Hamala Diabate, Elikeh, and Sugar Bear and EU.

Kohoutek, Taiwan Housing Project, Tulsa
Sunday, May 4 at Velvet Lounge, $8

Kohoutek used to be a D.C.-based band, and the group’s drummer, Scott Verrastro, regularly put on DIY shows at his home on Florida Avenue NW. Those days have passed now that Verrastro has moved to Philadelphia, so Kohoutek’s improvised psych-noise shows in the District are a much rarer occurrence than they used to be. Verrastro still knows how to put together a killer lineup, though: joining Kohoutek are Taiwan Housing Project (a collaboration between Kilynn Lunsford of Little Claw and Mark Feehan of Harry Pussy) and Tulsa, a band featuring members of the psych-shoegaze band Dark Sea Dream.

Jessy Lanza, Ricky Eat Acid
Monday, May 5 at Black Cat Backstage, $12

This week Stereogum declared that R&B-tinged electronic music—inescapable for the last three years—had reached its saturation point. I can’t disagree, but I’m not quite ready to take Jessy Lanza’s electronic-meets-R&B album “Pull My Hair Back” out of my headphones. The whispery Canadian vocalist and producer is too good at earworms. A live video she recently recorded for KCRW is entrancing, particularly her deft performance of “Keep Moving,” a highlight from “Pull My Hair Back” (and my running playlist). Monday night, she’s supported by College Park, Maryland’s own Ricky Eat Acid. (Ally Schweitzer)

Also recommended this week:
Heavy Metal Night at Port City Brewing and Foul Swoops, Flesh Panthers, and Neonates at The Dougout (tonight); Typefighter, Shark Week, Sunset Guns, and Teen Mom at Rock & Roll Hotel (Saturday); A Minor Forest and Two Inch Astronaut at DC9 (Sunday); The Dead Women and Nice Breeze at Galaxy Hut (Monday).

These and other show listings can be found on ShowListDC.