Rich Ruth's Eclectic Fusion & Steve Roach Structures from Silence at 40 in Echoes Podcast.

Rich Ruth with Mikaela Davis at Johnny Brenda’s Photo: J.Diliberto

First in the Echoes Podcast we talk to Rich Ruth. That’s the performance name of Michael Ruth, a multi-instrumentalist from Nashville.  With Rich Ruth, you can hear 4 or five influences in any song. One track alone might conjure up John Coltrane, Brian Eno, Gong, Black Sabbath and King Crimson. Yet it all holds together in Rich Ruth. He has a new album out, Water Still Flows on Jack White’s Third Man records. His basic music philosophy is, wherever it goes he follows.

Rich Ruth: Essentially, it’s all made in like a laboratory with me spending hours and hours and hours, just like manipulating and, adding and subtracting until things feel right and just listening over and over and over again and getting inspired and tracking a bunch of guitars or synths or something and then sending it to people and so it just becomes this hodgepodge of all these different voices that I’ve arranged in these weird ways

His music is a flow from ambient to free jazz to parts unknown. We talk with Rich Ruth in the Echoes Podcast from PRX.

Rich Ruth – God Won’t Speak – Water Still Flows

Steve Roach circa 1984 in Original Timeroom

Steve Roach has made over a hundred recordings in the last 42 years, but two of them stand out.  One is Dreamtime Return, his first foray into techno-tribal sounds, and the other dates back 40 years to his third album, Structures from Silence.  It was an album that took ambient music to the next level, from Brian Eno’s experimental abstractions, to a music forged in a contemplative crucible and born purely of electronic instruments. Originally self-released, then picked up by the Fortuna label, Projekt Records has just put out a deluxe triple CD anniversary edition.  We go back in time with Steve Roach to hear about the foundation of Structures from Silence.

Artist – Title – Album