Ramayya’s adventures in the Spice Age

After years of working in the anime and corporate music scenes of Japan, Raj Ramayya came back to North America about a decade ago, opened a recording studio north of San Francisco, and began a mission to break through in the United States and his native Canada.

But there are thousands of singer-songwriters trying to gain a critical mass of attention in North America, where few have heard Ramayya’s songs such as Anjali, Lost in the Desert, Young Peruvians and Sister Lately (a jazzy piece with 3/4 time). While younger competitors try to climb the industry ladder by playing hundreds of gigs at smaller venues, Ramayya has mainly focussed his cosmic energy on recording at his plush Strawberry Hill studio in Novato, California.

Recently, Raj has worked on recordings in his native Saskatchewan with engineer and producer Ross Nykiforuk, a keyboard player in Northern Pikes, a band from the 1990s which received modest radio and TV play in Canada thanks to Canadian content regulations.

Instead of offering insights about life in Canada, Ramayya and Nykiforuk chose to embark on a space journey in glossy recordings such as Stardust, Holy Cosmic Cow, A Simulated Dream and Raj’s upcoming Set my Navigator for the Sun.

Singing about outer space as if he’s really there, Ramayya’s music and words feel weightless and adrift in a Simulated Dream without gravity. With references to aliens and galaxies, Ramayya’s writing on Spice Age is more portraiture than poetry, philosophy or observations about his life, as David Bowie did through his inventions of Major Tom and Space Oddity. Though imaginative, Spice Age has less weight than Ramayya’s earlier works which featured Hindu spirituality and the memorable hooks, luscious melodies, heartfelt desperation and instrumental sophistication of his Japan-based work in Beautiful Losers with versatile guitarist Brett Boyd, an aficionado of the 5/4, 6/4, 7/8 or other odd time signatures of bands such as Rush and Tool.

Without Boyd or a regular touring band, Ramayya seems alone on his spaceship, and he hasn’t posted many videos of himself performing Spice Age songs live. The songwriting is chirpy and snappy but not as clever or memorable as his earlier works, which drew comparisons to fellow western Canadians Burton Cummings, Randy Bachman, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Bryan Adams and bands such as Harlequin. Lacking a human drummer to loosen up rhythms with odd time signatures, the beats and progressions are steady but not dynamic enough to break through the stratosphere and beyond the box of recording via click track and grid.

While Spice Age might not write a new chapter in Canadian music history, it’s still better than many recordings coming out of the Trudeau era of censorship and conformity, where many have inflated audience numbers to receive government grants. Overall, the production on Spice Age, which sounds like a stained glass window in an empty church, reflects well in Ramayya’s videos. Holy Cosmic Cow evokes Every Little Thing by The Police. Interstellar Brother of Man dabbles with reggae guitar minus the skank and street smarts of Jamaican raggamuffins. Paparazzi Princess, a disco song about Bollywood, calls to mind Ramayya’s earlier Brown Brother and New Millennium Indian. Put the Spice Back Into My Life, Two Dimensional Girl, and Simulated Dream are poppy, bouncy and Duran Duran futuristic, as Raj sings about “living like the last human being, a living disaster in a simulated dream.” Stardust is perhaps the best Spice Age track, with an interesting keyboard line and pathos about missing a girl who was here “on a holiday”. But without an editor; it tends to drag for more than 5 minutes.

At best, Ramayya’s adventure into the Spice Age might prove to be a transition phase for him, if he can come back down to Earth and into his studio to explore his inner world with more urgency. Ramayya, an Earthling with experiences all over the world, has a lot more to say.