Biography
If you only have three minutes to spare before moving on, do not start listening to this. This is not made for you who scan through discs and files just waiting for the next catchy hook that you can have embedded into your ear for a week, before the next ear-worm comes along. However, if you are ready to discover the next artist that you love so much you struggle to figure where exactly they should be placed in your “top-ten” list of favorites this year, (or all time for that matter), then it is time to pause, and prepare to spend some time listening to the fluid sounds and creations of Ryan McNeely.
Ryan McNeely is creating a sound that one can’t help but immediately dive into the clichés they’ve used for all of the other artists on their lists, like “wildly eclectic,” “innovative,” and “original.” These do not do his music justice unfortunately. It is inspiring, fluid, and surreal. “Beautiful” is a good place to start. A prominent and young composer with a veteran’s experience already in the performance and creation of music, McNeely has been a recognized and revered name among those privileged to experience his music in the art, performance, and music scene in St. Louis. Combining layers of blended pop and mainstream complexities with more underground and ambiguous innovative sounds, Ryan’s music is at once a wonderful experience to listen to, and upon further inspection, an amazing accomplishment of many different styles, rhythms, moods, and methods of creating the music that you hear. His hooks float around inside the compositions, avoiding the possibility of ever simply being pinned down and identified. Combining electronic sources, with acoustic instrumentation, a wide variety of vocal layers that spread over beautiful symphonic arrangements that only arise out of the thinnest and delicate air, along with many other ingredients, he moves something inside every listener who has ever learned to appreciate something new that they have not heard before. In fact, Ryan may force the listener, as he has this one, to adjust their entire perception on what music should be and the directions that contemporary, avant-garde artists are taking today. That direction is the one in which Ryan McNeely is leading the way.
-Travis Williams
music critic, writer-PutOut Magazine
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