Label: Third Man
Released 2024
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.
Track listing:
- Playing Favorites
- Eat It and Beat It
- All Lined Up
- Don’t Come Lookin’
- I Gotta Go
- Moonstruck
- Mechanical Garden
- Golden Hour
- Tea On The Kettle
- Paper Time
- When You Get Back