Ricky Eat Acid Debuts “hey,” His New Album’s Gorgeous Opening Track

It's a damn good day whenever Sam Ray returns to his ambient-ish electronic work as Ricky Eat Acid. Today is one of those good days. We've got a new song called "hey," streaming below. It's the opening track on Talk To You Soon, Ray's full-length follow-up to pristine 2014 artifact Three Love Songs. The new record, which features contributions from familiar characters like Harmony Tividad, Spencer Radcliffe, and Caroline White, will be his first release for Brooklyn's Terrible Records.

This first track is a grand slam, too. It feels a bit like a labored-over culmination of all Ray's other post-Love Songs tinkering under the REA alias, which has included dizzy club gunk, pre-Stranger Things horror synths, big-tent bangers, and, like, trip hop. Featuring some mega-sounding Owen Pallett strings, "hey" starts off slow and then peaks dramatically, before ending quietly — with just a few fuzz-swaddled piano plinks. It feels full of a million emotions but also weirdly aloof, like the score to the climax of a film that's actually about nothing. It's a great start to a great record.

"I always wanted to open the record with the swelling chord at the beginning of the song," Ray told The FADER in an email. "I'm glad I got to do that. It reminds me of being in the back of a very dark room that's occasionally pulsing with light and just sort of taking it all in and resigning yourself to it. Like an absolutely emotionless sort of euphoria. That shit is cool to me. Like what doing molly feels like when your body's stopped producing serotonin at all."

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