RICH RUTH, an ostensibly 'ambient' artist based in Nashville, Tennessee, released this album last year some time on the Third Man label. I like it when successful rock & rollers put their money where their mouth is and fund the rest of us losers, so don't you be dissing the TMR corporation. Anyone resurrecting recordings by the Stooges, Captain Beefheart and Albert Ayler - among many others - and funding print media a la Maggot Brain, is surely worth tipping one's cap to, no? Mind you, I listened to an album Jack White released last year just recently and thought it was complete shit, but who cares? Him?! Of course not, and I'm an asshole.

This is Rich Ruth's second full-lengther, the first one from 2019, Calming Signals, being self-released. Mr. White obviously dug the Krauty, ambient vibes of the debut and said, "Kid - do it". I Survived, It's Over, which I only heard for the first time a couple of months ago, because I have the fingers on the pulse of a dead man, is belatedly one of my favourite releases of 2022, so throw it on that list I made last December. I wouldn't have even been aware of this record's existence if it wasn't for a customer in the shop asking me for it, so again, let the embarrassments roll...

On this 7-track LP, RR delves more into a spiritual-jazz realm, his spidery guitar work reminding me of the summit meeting on McLaughlin/Santana's Love Devotion Surrender album from the '70s - an absolutely remarkable piece of work housed in the most shitawful sleeve of its day; it really is one of the most deceptively beautiful and cosmic records of its era - which means this LP sounds like much of it could have been recorded and released in the early/mid '70s when this stuff was king. To throw another reference around, the electric keyboard work has that same searching/meandering quality as Alice Coltrane's from the period, so again, let's mention the Santana/Coltrane collab' from '74, Illuminations.

Are you getting lost in all these references? Is the name Carlos Santana making you break out in hives? Don't let it: most of everything he did up until the mid '70s was choice. If the past decade of sniffing around many a musical artist I previously dismissed has taught me anything, it's that sometimes even the most stinky of artists started off with something to say. Rich Ruth clearly has something to say, which he's saying through his music sans any verbiage, and I'm very curious to know where he heads next.

The sound of I Survived, It's Over is very much of the now sound, one which mixes ambient, electronics, spiritual-jazz, fusion and all points between (and I'm thinking of other practitioners in these realms I also dig: Sarathy Korwar, Ruby Rushton, Kamaal Williams, Alfa Mist, Kamasi Washington, Yazz Ahmed, Nala Sinephro), though his background appears to be more "rock" as opposed to electronica or jazz-funk, which means all kinds of slobs will dig it. I dig it a lot: one of my fave discoveries of 2023. You heard it here last, as always.