Last updated: 5 hours ago
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.
To Ruth, Water Still Flows, which takes its title from a translation of a Li Bai poem called “A Farewell To Secretary Shuyun,” has become a sort of mantra. “It's a good reset phrase remembering the fluidity and consistency of life no matter your anxiety or how you get bogged down,” he says. “Sometimes I get in my head about my own creativity. Sometimes I have doubts or wonder if I’m going to lose these creative sparks as I get older. But they always come back and I always find inspiration with the people around me. Music is always gonna be there.”
To Ruth, Water Still Flows, which takes its title from a translation of a Li Bai poem called “A Farewell To Secretary Shuyun,” has become a sort of mantra. “It's a good reset phrase remembering the fluidity and consistency of life no matter your anxiety or how you get bogged down,” he says. “Sometimes I get in my head about my own creativity. Sometimes I have doubts or wonder if I’m going to lose these creative sparks as I get older. But they always come back and I always find inspiration with the people around me. Music is always gonna be there.”
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