Bing & Ruth

CAT: RVNGNL27
October 14, 2014

Tomorrow Was the Golden Age is an album length composition by minimalist ensemble Bing & Ruth. Written and conducted by pianist David Moore, Tomorrow Was the Golden Age is a halcyonic journey to a neverending place, where music waxes, wanes and drifts imperceptibly from silence to grand, glowing sound.

Formed in the mid-aughts among music student friends at New York City’s New School, Bing & Ruth’s lineup has shifted with the scope of each recording. For Tomorrow Was the Golden Age, the group whittled down from the eleven players on their first album, City Lake, to seven: two upright bassists, two clarinetists, a cellist and a tape delay tech, all supporting David Moore’s sublime yet resonant piano scores.

Moore is responsible for the compelling melodies mediating the overarching ambience of Tomorrow Was the Golden Age. Outside of Bing & Ruth, Moore is also a multi-faceted composer, scoring under his own name and for old-time fiddle groups, which he describes as “drone-based with a lessened concern for perfect intonation.” These ventures illustrate Moore’s unpretentious devotion to various musical traditions, yet Bing & Ruth remains Moore’s principal project, where form ventures even further beyond recognition.

With untethered textures inspired by the indeterminate music of Morton Feldman and later torch bearer Gavin Bryars, Tomorrow Was the Golden Age achieves canon-level quality for instrumental music. Within the piece’s extended passages, Bing & Ruth wander through gradient fields of color, illuminated by a delicate architecture of slowly developing microtonal harmonies, Steve Reich-ian piano lines and the same analog tape delay that launched both Brian Eno‘s Apollo and the greatest dub reggae engineers into the unknown.

Moore employed fundamental contrasts as the conceptual mode for Tomorrow Was the Golden Age. “I wanted to take something from the darkness to the light and observe what that process would result in,” states Moore. Daybreak offered one contrast, with its untraceable hues from dawn to sunrise. Silence and its intrinsic gift of listening offered another. The emergence of Tomorrow Was the Golden Age from the two is Bing & Ruth’s epic and ultimate reprisal.

The players on Tomorrow Was the Golden Age are David Moore on piano, Jeremy Viner on clarinet, Patrick Breiner on clarinet, Mike Effenberger operating tape delay, Leigh Stuart on cello, and Jeff Ratner and Greg Chudzik on bass, respectively. The album was recorded in Yonkers, New York and mixed in Brooklyn, with Brian Bender and Moore at the controls.

Intended to be experienced at both high and low volumes, Tomorrow Was the Golden Age is perfectly calibrated for meditative backdrops, burrowed headphone listening and utter captivation when performed live. Its sonorous palette inspires emotional response across a dynamic field, welcoming a journey to and beyond tomorrow’s promise.

Bing & Ruth’s Tomorrow Was the Golden Age is available now on double LP, CD and digital formats via RVNG Intl.