***Rich Ruth, the recording project of Nashville multi-instrumentalist Michael Ruth, makes wholly immersive instrumental songs that thread the line between gleefully adventurous and calmingly meditative. His music starts in solitude with mesmerizing loops and drones anchoring the arrangements that are eventually colored in by an eclectic cast of collaborators. The resulting exploratory compositions, which combine spiritual jazz, synth-infused post-rock, and cosmic ambient, often beguile but they always soar with a palpable immediacy. His new album Water Still Flows is both his heaviest and his most cathartic. Across seven songs, the LP is both a document of an artist stretching the limits of his process and a testament to how songwriting can be a personally grounding force.
LP $27.15
06/21/2024
***MICHAEL RICH RUTH has composed ambient music for a long time. After a break from years touring with different bands, he spent his free time in a small home studio in North Nashville. The blueprints for Calming Signals began to emerge through a more dedicated focus on the diverse traditions of ambient, new age, spiritual jazz, and minimalist music. The ideas became realized pieces when Ruth started to collaborate with friends. These players transformed the material into something much more lush and unpredictable; pairing repetitive, droning synthesizer movements with organic improvisation. Calming signals is a term that refers to the way dogs communicate stress and use certain mechanisms to calm themselves or reset. Ruth relied on the creation of this music to find peace and balance amidst trauma. One summer morning while he was recording the album, Ruth was held up at gunpoint and carjacked by two people outside of his home. The following weeks were spent working on Calming Signals with a new layer of angst and emotion. These compositions became a means for him to work through this personal struggle and organize his anxiety into something constructive. Features contributions from CALEB HICKMAN (tenor saxophone), CAMERON CARRUS (upright bass), REUBEN GINGRICH (drums), JAMES GREEN (flugelhorn), SAM QUE (baritone sax). Mastered by MIKEY YOUNG. Edition of 450 copies.
LP $17.25
10/25/2019
***Recorded under a loft bed in the guest bedroom of his Nashville home, MICHAEL RUTH aka RICH RUTH's I Survived, It’s Over starts in a humble space. And while many contemporary music projects are produced in such an environment, I Survived, It’s Over sets itself apart in its transformative properties as well as its transparency. What we have here is honest sound exploration, session musician-level instrumentation, and a true love for nature run through the fingers of a dude who can channel some acute and undeniable magic. Underneath the swell of the strings and the shredding of the guitars, this record has hard working, rustbelt, drum-heavy roots all over it (which makes sense as Ruth hails from outside of Toledo, the album was mixed by JOHN MCENTIRE from Chicago band Tortoise). Many of the flutes, saxophones, pedal steel, and other instruments were recorded remotely because we live in the future, but this only adds to the collage of sampled and sample-able material that Rich Ruth has to offer. The organic relationships between the artist and other musicians on the album is evident even in the compilation style sampling that needs to occur in putting such a project together. I Survived, It’s Over is a record you should buy for your friend, your foe, and yourself. It’ll sit perfectly on your shelf between Alice Coltrane and Hiroshi Yoshimura.
LP $19.50
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