David Moore’s malleable minimalism project Bing & Ruth returns with a streamlined ensemble, a sharp focus and a wordlessly evocative LockDown transcendence.
The New York composer David Moore’s penchant for a trance-inducing mixture of modern classical, drone, ambient and minimalism has been honed across a series of studiously composed and well received releases under the Bing & Ruth alias. Albums like City Lake and No Home of the Mind have plunged listeners into a dreamy, yearning sound world that seamlessly connects the dots between modern practitioners like Nils Frahm, Olafur Arnalds and Stars of the Lid and legendary progenitors Philip Glass and Steve Reich.
On his fourth recording, Species, Moore’s ever-evolving project – now slimmed to three with founding members Jeremy Viner and Jeff Ratner on clarinet and acoustic bass – trades his customary piano for Farfisa organ and establishes a shimmering, refined elegance whilst retaining his music’s core elements of brooding sorrow, enveloping vastness and mournful contemplation. Inspired by Moore’s preoccupations with the desert and long-distance running as well as a spot of R & R in California’s Point Dume, Species plays out like a forlorn accumulation of gradual swells of piercing clarity amidst blistering heat and open spaces.
Body In A Room is our impressionistic gateway, a steadily cascading meditation built around foggy layers of arpeggiated organ and clusters of rising and falling tones. Badwater Psalm sounds like its title suggests, a queasy church hymn propelled heavenwards by sustained Farfisa and wheezing, sub-sonic bass.
The weightless, prog-infused bliss of Live Forever is laced with rapture and catharsis over its stately thirteen minutes, whilst the heart-rending, Terry Riley-inspired wonder of The Pressure of this Water pairs hypnotic ripples of organ with springing clarinet to eddying effect.
Recorded in the West Texas desert without dubbing or editing, Species is a rapt, immersive and spacious experience that harnesses the power of sacred choral music and flows like a graceful stream, painstakingly conjuring a dizzying sense of endless discovery that demands close attention.
Score: 4/5
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