Anyone who has spent much time around synthesizers knows that each one is unique. Eddie Ruscha certainly does. The Los Angeles musician has been collecting synths for decades, and he describes them in terms usually reserved for woodland critters, deities, or psychoactive substances. One has a “wiggly” character, and another is distinguished by its “seeping snail trails and grit fits.” In one digital synth of recent vintage he hears the “hallucinogenic” specter of people chanting, “or possibly alien choirs.” On Who Are You, all those voices get the chance to be heard. Drawing inspiration from Balearic beat and ambient pop, it’s a concise, easy-on-the-ears listen whose surface simplicity leaves ample room for his instruments to reveal their quirks.
This is Ruscha’s first album under his E Ruscha V alias, but he’s no newcomer. He’s been producing and playing in bands for nearly 30 years. (He’s also the son, if you were wondering, of Ed Ruscha, the pop and conceptual artist.) In the early 1990s, he played in Medicine, a fuzz-besotted shoegaze act, and in the 2000s, he had a dub project called Future Pigeon; in recent years, both solo (as Secret Circuit) and in a variety of configurations with peers like Diego Herrera (aka Suzanne Kraft) and Rub N Tug’s Thomas Bullock, he’s been making left-field dance music indebted to cosmic disco, Italo, and primitive house. Who Are You is less club-focused than a lot of his recent output: The tempos are slower, the textures softer. It’s a lot less shaggy, too. If Secret Circuit’s Tactile Galactics, his last album for Beats in Space, suggested a spiked-punch basement party, Who Are You is geared for the breakfast table and the back porch.
Just 35 minutes long, the album is a mix of downbeat mood pieces, more fully fleshed-out songs, and effervescent ambient miniatures. The opening track, “The Hostess,” is one of the latter. The sparkling melody is reminiscent of music boxes; the gliding guitar melody is evocative of vintage exotica. The balmy mood thus set, “Who Are You” plunges us gently into Ruscha’s relaxed world, where the water is apparently 80 degrees year-round. It begins tentatively, with bubbly keys over halting drum-machine hits, and it gradually grows into a porous weave of synths and guitars with a decidedly tropical feel. There are hints of African guitar, Hawaiian slack key, and Caribbean steel drums, and behind that, chimes, birdsong, and wordless sighs, all bouncing like the animated molecules in a chemistry-class film. “Gravity Waves” is darker and dubbier, and “Lights Passing By” is a watery étude in the style of Harold Budd, with detuned piano swimming in an aquamarine tremolo haze. What all these songs share is an unusually vivid sense of detail. Ruscha is no minimalist, but he knows how to use empty space to let his sounds breathe. There’s a cartoon agreeability to his major-key changes, but there’s absolutely no clutter, and if you listen closely, the dynamic contours of his waveforms come alive, as vividly detailed as leaves under a microscope.
His stylistic cues are in keeping with the ongoing mellow-music revival: You can detect traces of Penguin Cafe Orchestra’s lilting chamber pop, Wally Badarou’s tropical funk, and Gigi Masin’s Mediterranean noonday calm; his guitar flourishes occasionally recall the Durutti Column’s Vini Reilly and Cocteau Twins’ Robin Guthrie. On the penultimate song, “Endless Sunday”—one of a pair of late-album highlights—Ruscha flips the script and indulges in smooth-jazz bass, shimmering bar chimes, and a silky G-funk synth lead, all overlaid with the warmest vocoder this side of Boards of Canada’s “In a Beautiful Place Out in the Country.” Even here, at his most gonzo, what is striking is how restrained his hand is. He has a way of using instruments so that they seem much more present than they actually are, soaking up silence like sponges. In the tranquil “In the Woods,” a clarinet plays just four notes before falling silent again, but its presence lingers. “Mainly I look for an instrument to speak to me and involve me—to bring me into its world,” Ruscha said in a recent interview. On Who Are You, he’s the most easygoing tour guide you could ask for.
