Bing & Ruth - City Lake

Pitchfork 76

City Lake is not a new Bing & Ruth record, but it might as well be. Only 250 copies of the chamber-ambient ensemble's album were pressed when it was first released on vinyl in 2010. It reappears now, on New York's RVNG Intl., as a sort of coda to last year's RVNG-released Bing & Ruth album Tomorrow Was the Golden Age. That record, a luminous affair for piano, cello, clarinet, bass, and tape delay, was many listeners' first encounter with David Moore's group, so it makes sense the label would want to dust off a recording that most people never got the chance to hear.

City Lake is very much of a piece with its successor, although there are subtle (and not-so-subtle) differences between the two. While Tomorrow utilized just seven players, City Lake features an 11-person ensemble—two clarinets, two cellos, two voices, bass, lap steel, tape delay, percussion, and piano—and the effect of the expanded lineup is notable. It's a fuller, richer sound with more definition. The piano leads the way, knocking out rapidly repeating chords that emphasize the instrument's percussive side, and the reeds, cello, and lap steel frequently twist into sturdy, vine-like shapes. Tomorrow, with its shimmering delay, has a wispier, more featherweight feel; City Lake, while still beautiful and tinged with melancholy, leaves more room for dissonance, and even flat-out chaos. If, already familiar with Tomorrow's calm, cozy atmospheres, you turn to City Lake to soundtrack your next dinner party, maybe don't use the fine china: Your meal may take an unexpected turn some 40 minutes in, when the music explodes into a buzzing, squealing maelstrom of insistent crash cymbals and earsplitting glissandi.

Just like Tomorrow, City Lake is built upon exceedingly simple musical figures, but the results are anything but. Moore is often compared to American minimalists like Steve Reich and Terry Riley, and not without reason; he is fond of repeating patterns and stalwart pedal tones, and his chord progressions are usually content to stay in one place, shifting from foot to foot. And, just like Reich and Riley, Moore's own music doesn't easily square with a concept like minimalism. Immersed in the billowing harmonics of City Lake, you don't think of empty space, but of fullness. You don't think of absence, but of presence. The dominant motif of "Broad Channel" may be the piano's hollow open fifth, but the way he uses the rest of the instruments to color in that interval, you're left with the impression of a sound that can't be contained.

You feel it most in "City Lake / Tu Sei Uwe". Gentle piano chords, wreathed in glowing drones, create a sense of space that exists outside of time. The rhythm plays out only in the broadest of strokes, like the movement of waves. It builds imperceptibly, until, some 10 minutes in, cymbals and voices and a stream of gravelly feedback rise in a squall that, in the score, is notated as "HEADACHE INDUCING LOUDNESS." It might feel out of character for Bing & Ruth; in fact, if you dropped in unawares, you might mistake the passage for Swans. But it's over just as quickly as it's begun—a sudden cutoff, then silence. If Tomorrow Was the Golden Age corresponds to what Erik Satie termed "furniture music," City Lake is a glimpse at the raw materials before all the splinters have been sanded down—and it is all the more exciting for them.