
It isn’t just Ray-Ban’s various shapes and sizes that make it the savviest cat in the eyewear game, but also the label’s totally awesome outings into music, where it has worked with countless artists that embody that same spirit of cool and creativity. And its latest Ray-Ban Raw Sounds is just one prime example. Tying together established and emerging artists, this project takes off with Brit rock legend Johnny Marr at the helm, and four contemporary bands who’ve each attempted to write a track inspired by elements supplied by Mr Marr himself. Yup, Johnny’s gone into his mind vault and dug out an original poem (I Know The Radiant City), a quotation from Schiller, a video of himself playing a tune dubbed “Strum and Drang”, a photo he took of two friends photographing each other (entited New Look!) as well as a map of New York’s Lower East Side, and passed them out to young guns Best Coast, Au Revoir Simone, Tom Vek and Mona to get creative with.
The results of this ambitious project are now ready for your consumption and boy, will you feed well. Johnny’s New Look! photograph provided the driving force behind Best Coast’s “Your Sleep” (“Because my brain goes straight to romance”) and Mona’s uptempo “Jericho”, while his “Strum and Drang” video has helped birth Au Revoir Simone’s “How Long”, of which its repetition and finger picking tie back to Johnny’s loop. And employing all five elements for inspiration is Tom Vek and his creation, “Film Your Own Television”, with lyrics inspired by the map and the photo, and everything else by the poem, quote and video.

And of course, all that music’s gonna need an outlet, which Ray-Ban has sorted out with a series of gigs in music capitals around the world. The first of these concerts kicked off on 13 October at the Angel Orensanz Foundation For Contemporary Art in New York City, where punters got to first lay ears on these unique collaborations. The unique venue played host to a good-looking crowd – faces neatly framed in Ray-Bans – and music treats from Best Coast and Mona. But the spotlight was saved for Johnny Marr, who arrived with his band of Healers to run through his stellar back catalogue and give all you Smiths fans a reason to live again. Following that awesome launch, Ray-Ban Raw Sounds will soon be making its way to London and Hong Kong, where it’s set to unleash both sound and style. Stay tuned as we bring you the scoop on those gigs as they happen, but for now, let’s dig into what went down in NYC.
























None Found