Skyllumina (International Anthem)
Ruth Goller
Released March 2024
Jazzwise 20 Best New Jazz Albums of 2024
YouTube:
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About:
SKYLLUMINA represents a new evolution of London-based, Italian-born composer, bassist, and vocalist Ruth Goller.
Goller is known for her bass and vocal work with Alabaster DePlume, whose music she elevates in live contexts with her genre-less improvisational intuition. She’s also known for work with Bex Burch’s Vula Viel, whose DIY label released Goller’s solo debut Skylla in 2021. And she is known to creative musicians far and wide, with an incredibly diverse CV that includes performance and recording with Shabaka Hutchings, Rokia Traore, Melt Yourself Down, Sam Amidon, Damon Albarn, and many more.
Expanding on the wholly original sound Goller established with her solo work on Skylla – i.e. compositions of detuned bass under a spectra of soprano voices she arranged and overdubbed herself – SKYLLUMINA complicates matters as she augments every piece with a different drummer. “As a bass-player, I love playing with drummers and I decided to focus on my close connection to that instrument and to the amazing people I met in my life who play it,” says Goller. Her accompanists on the album include International Anthem labelmates Bex Burch, Tom Skinner, and Frank Rosaly, as well as prolific British player Sebastian Rochford and longtime Vula Viel collaborator Jim Hart. But more importantly: this music is an immersive hyperfocus for Goller and her patently distinct, singular compositional vision.
SKYLLUMINA, despite its highly conceptual origins, is heavy with human emotion. Its dark washes of melody and contrapuntal percussion could fit easily into a mixtape with indie downbeat / ennui royalty like Grouper or Low, while also being right at home next a Cage-Tudor prepared piano piece. And the piercing, sibilant ice age siren song heard in Goller’s powerfully feminine vocal arrangements find her in an otherworld only occasionally inhabited by the likes of Björk and The Knife.
Goller says: “This record is deep insight into my soul and my recent life. It’s coming through a meteor storm and grasping the first light… out of a very unexpected tumultuous time… there are feelings of grief, loss, hope, purest of love, connection to my home, death, and new configurations… as well as self-discovery.”
Track Listing:
1. Below my skin 03:39
2. Reach down into the deepest white 04:27
3. Of Snowhere 01:48
4. Next time I keep my hands down 03:41
5. All the light I have, I hand to you 06:40
6. She was my own she was myself 04:45
7. How to be free from it 03:39
8. From breaks to shreds it’s a short path 04:30
9. Don’t follow me 05:05
10. I have for you – simple truth 06:15
Personnel:
Ruth Goller: electric bass (1, 2, 4, 5, 7-10), vocals (1, 2, 4-10), double bass (3, 4, 6, 7, 10)
Tom Skinner: drums and electronics (1)
Mark Sanders: drums (2, 3)
Jim Hart: vibraphone (3, 4), drums (4)
Max Andrzejewski: drums (5)
Bex Burch: sanza and llimba (6)
Emanuele Maniscalco: drums (7)
Sebastian Rochford: drums (8)
Lauren Kinsella: vocals (8)
Will Glaser: gongs (9)
Frank Rosaly: drums and percussion (10)
Mixed by Dave Vettraino.
Mastered by David Allen
Masks by wintercroft.com
Artwork by Zak Watson
Poem by Alabaster DePlume
Design by Craig Hansen
Review:
Italian-born bassist, vocalist and musical adventurer Ruth Goller prompted double takes with her deeply intimate, often unsettling 2021 debut Skylla, a work named after the six-headed monster of Greek mythology and featuring a series of improvised works, each comprising overdubbed soprano vocals, each with a completely fresh tuning embellished from bass-harmonics beneath.
Goller’s penchant for experimentation and collaboration might have its roots in the DIY punk scene she inhabited as a teenager but it is also unmistakably, liberatingly, jazz; this marvellously sucker-punching recording, just 44 minutes long, finds the London-based Goller – formerly a mainstay of outfits from Acoustic Ladyland and Melt Yourself Down to Bex Burch’s glorious Vula Viel – augmenting every piece with a different, similarly inventive drummer.
Emotions are again at a premium: Goller has been on an extreme inner journey from grief-struck perfect storm to hope-lit self-discovery, and the soul-baring aesthetic is maintained on tracks from ‘Below My Skin’ (a spectral, windswept diorama of collaged sound, with Tom Skinner on electronics and drums) and ‘She Was My Own She Was My Skin’ (a hyperfocused wash of ethereal female vocals made more haunting by the presence of Burch on pinging thumb piano) and the closer ‘I Have For You – Simple Truth’, its Phoenix-from-the-ashes vibe stoked by the fragile, stuttering percussion of Frank Rosaly.
Skyllumina is an album by an artist with a gift and a vision, and doesn’t reward repeated listening – it deserves it.
Jane Cornwell (Jazzwise)
