“From adventurous improvisation to groove-oriented ensemble work, Ray’s Music Exchange make every track an invitation to listen, to feel the groove and to experience the sheer excitement of musicians making music together.”
Ray’s Music Exchange bring their considerable musical experience to ‘A Live Family Rayunion 2025 LP’ which is a six track live album recorded at the legendary Woodward Theatre in Cincinnati to a sold out house. It’s a celebration of the band’s 30 year history and features progressive funk, jazz fusion and a great deal of improvisation with a very powerful horn section. The appeal of the record is in the relationship between the musicians. They don’t treat the songs as just things to play, they use the long standing chemistry of the group to go off in all sorts of different musical directions whilst still maintaining the momentum. “Furley’s Comet” is the track that gives the album its title and is the one that really brings out the adventurous side of the record. Ray’s Music Exchange have built their reputation on the idea of the instruments interacting with each other and this track is very much in that tradition of exploratory playing. It’s a fusion of funk and jazz which allows the rhythm to drive the track and the instruments to have a real conversation. Rather than follow a standard pop format, the focus is on the performance as a whole and on the potential that arises when a number of experienced players are together on stage.
“Quartalchordiac 12 tone Jam” is the more experimental of the tracks. The title is a melding of a number of things really, a reference to harmonic and compositional ideas with the very loose, free form of a jam. That’s very much in keeping with a group whose origins are in the world of improvisation and whose performances are underpinned by a very high level of musicianship. It’s one of the tracks which really does stand out in the collection as being a bit more adventurous. For the listener who is into jazz fusion, extended instrumental work and the sort of unpredictability that comes with a live performance, this is one of the tracks which you really do want to pay attention to. “We Like You” kicks things off with a rather more overtly friendly title and “Peruvius” is another interesting name to add to the list. The album as a whole is a collection of original material and is very much in the band’s usual genre-defying mode. The full album features the veteran line up of Brad Myers (guitar and vocals), Michael “Maddog” Mavridoglou (trumpet, keyboards and vocals), Nick Blasky (bass and vocals), Jason Smart (drums) and Matthew Hawkins (percussion). That level of experience underpins the performance and allows the music to be very much in the realm of funk in terms of its rhythm, while still having the freedom and intricacy of an improvisational jazz piece. The release notes don’t go into any detail as to the arrangements of these two tracks but they are part of a six track programme of original material.
‘Dancing About Architecture’ is one of the most evocative of the titles in the collection. It’s a phrase that plays with the notion of describing something which is often best understood by simply experiencing it. That in itself is a very apt description of a band whose very existence is predicated on the interaction between the musicians and the audience. The live shows of Ray’s Music Exchange are very much about the conversation between the stage and the dancefloor, the music being transmitted through rhythm, movement and the very real sense of shared experience. It’s a perfectly appropriate title in that spirit, one which doesn’t require the music to be reduced to a single description. We close out the track listing with “U ‘N’ I” which perfectly encapsulates the collaborative nature of the album. The band’s links to the wider Cincinnati music scene are a key part of the story throughout this release. The guest performers are saxophonist Josh Kline, trombonist Spencer Merk, keyboardist Jackson Steiger and horn players Colin Thompson, Wayne Kilgard and Jonathan Wiseman (from Ernie Johnson in Detroit). They bring the band’s sound into the wider Afrobeat and dance-funk scene of the region. It’s a very appropriate inclusion for a band that have spent 30 years building their community through live music. Recorded by Nicholas Radina and mixed and mastered by Ashley Shepherd at Audiogrotto, A Live Family Rayunion 2025 LP is a document of a band re-connecting with its roots and opening the doors to some new members in the performance. The six tracks are a further testament to the group’s long-standing commitment to instrumental work, the power of the rhythm section and the importance of the communal experience. It’s also available as a limited edition of 300 hand-numbered and hand-stamped vinyl (with concert photos and liner notes). For the die hard fans it’s another step in the RayUnion story, for the new listener it’s a good way of getting to know the band.
English