Bing & Ruth
City Lake [reissue]
RVNG
7/10
Most folks met David Moore’s orchestral ensemble Bing & Ruth via 2014’s sublime Tomorrow Was the Golden Age, but the group’s first masterpiece actually came a few years earlier with City Lake, originally pressed in scant quantity in 2010. RVNG Intl.’s new edition of the album is remastered and expanded, and the extras are nice—especially the deconstructed, solo piano version of “Broad Channel”—but hardly necessary for appeal. On its own, City Lake is an enveloping listen. Marshalling wide swaths of lap steel, cello, wordless vocals, and nudging bass and percussion, the Brooklyn composer leads the group on piano, tapping into the trance-inducing minimalism of Steve Reich and Gavin Bryars with long, expressive drones. At its most rhythmic, as on the clap-driven “Rails,” the music feels like staring out at a blurred landscape from a speeding car; at its most apocalyptic, like the sawing, post-rock close of “City Lake/Tu Sei Uwe,” it’s violent and overwhelming—pure, rapturous listening.
