It’s always Nashville. The melting pot of talent and inspiration that is that city makes me envious from afar. All the best instrumentalists test their powers there. My favourite band All Them Witches was formed there. Like in New Orleans, there is live music in every bar, restaurant and coffee shop, at a scale Camden could never imagine, let alone accommodate. There’s music in the streets, there’s music in each house, there’s music in any venue with a permit or permissive neighbours. It permeates the city. It keeps it running.
So it comes as no surprise that the incredible cosmic jazz multi-instrumentalist and producer Rich Ruth and banjo player Allison de Groot have been brewing something very special together. Their upcoming collaborative album, off of which they have released the opening track ‘Nervion’ last month, offers listeners a dip into nostalgia, the shade of melancholy that crosses centuries and hurt, and emerges cleansed and brilliant.
Now their latest single, ‘Distance From Then’, further delivers on that promise. Bringing together the wistfulness of the banjo with spiralling electronic layers, it starts off like a folk song you once heard in childhood and builds into Rich Ruth‘s signature sprawling landscapes of sound. Featuring Patrick M’Gonigle on the fiddle and mandolin, and Parker James on the vibraphone, the track webs and flows, like you’re falling asleep on a moving train and surrounding sounds reach you as unintelligible, surreal, magical.
Allison de Groot & Rich Ruth comes out October 2nd, available to preorder now from Western Vinyl and Bandcamp.