Ruins - Biography
By Scott Feemster
Ruins is a Japanese experimental/progressive rock power duo that has built up an extensive catalog of releases and have become influential among a cult following of admirers of adventurous music.
Ruins is basically one of the many musical projects, (and longest running), of the drummer and vocalist Tatsuya Yoshida. In 1985, Tatsuya and first bassist Kawamoto Hideki were to join with a guitarist to form a progressive rock power trio, but when the guitarist never showed up for practice, the duo decided to carry on with just the two of them providing the music. The duo were heavily influenced by the French progressive rock band Magma, both in the sound and structure of their songs, but also in the fact that Ruins uses an invented language for their vocals, much in the way that Magma founder Christian Vander created the language Kobaian for his ensemble. Other influences are also at work on Ruins sound, including Tuvan throat singing, influences from other prog bands like King Crimson, Gong and Yes, and influence from modern classical composition. Another aspect similar to classical composition is the fact that, perhaps surprisingly, much of the dense material Ruins performs is actually written out in score form by Yoshida. To call Ruins music classical would be a mistake, as the band's music harnesses much of the energy, aggression and noise of the worlds of avant garde rock, jazz, metal and hardcore. The group employs odd time signatures, passages of out-and-out noise and sudden tempo changes to sculpt a unique sound using just the two members nonsensical vocals, Yoshida's battery of drums and a six-string bass fed through various combinations of effects, overdrive and distortion.
Ruins first released a cassette-only recording of their first show together titled, appropriately, First Gig (Magiabutsu)(1987), and followed that the next year with another cassette release, Ruins 3 (Trans). Somehow through the underground musical channels, Ruins was brought to the attention of Shimmy Disc label owner Kramer, a former member of Shockabilly and long an aficionado of odd and out-of-the-way music, and he contacted the band and signed them to his label for their debut on CD, 1990's Stonehenge. By this time original bassist Kawamoto Hideki had been replaced by Kimoto Kazuyoshi. The higher profile afforded them by being on a better-distributed well respected indie label meant the band made a fairly large splash in underground music, and the band's mix of angular, low-end pummeling combined with sometimes surprisingly catchy songs carved out a unique niche. Ruins next album was Burning Stone (Shimmy Disc) , released in 1992, and it continued refining the exacting but demented sound of the first disc. By this time Kazuyoshi had been replaced by yet another bassist, Masuda Ryuichi. The new duo went on to release Graviyaunosch (Nice Guy) and the double-album length Ruins 2 & 19 Numbers in 1993, and then followed those releases with collaborations with Japanese noise artist Omoide Hatoba on the album Ruins & Hatoba (Magaibutsu)(1994) and a cassette only collaboration with Japanese free-jazz saxophone luminary Umezu Kazutoki entitled Ruins & Umezu Kazutoki (F.M.N.)(1994).
The group's sound and outlook would seem to dovetail nicely with the aesthetic that downtown New York saxophonist and composer John Zorn was cultivating with his widely eclectic new music label, Tzadik, and the band released their next effort, 1995's Hyderomastgroningem on his label. The album further refined the Ruins sound and included such absurdist titles to their songs as “Bliezzaning Moltz” and “Bonze From Hell”. The fact that most of their songs were sung in an imaginary language by two Japanese musicians and yet had mostly English titles further added to the band's crazy-yet-serious and seriously loud manifesto. The duo also collaborated with English improvisational/free-jazz guitarist Derek Bailey on the album Saisoro (Tzadik) (1995), and later again with him in 1997 for the album Tohjinbo (Paratactile). Ruins also collaborated with American rock arist Jason Willet for the album Jason Willett & Ruins (1995). The group switched bass players once again by the time of their next release, 1998's Refusal Fossil (Skin Graft), this time recruiting bassist Sasaki Hishashi, a veteran of the Japanese grindcore scene. It's amazing that with the parade of different bass players in the band that the sound of the group itself didn't change drastically over the course of the band's history, but this probably has more to do with the fact that Yoshida was writing and scoring most of the music. For the next Ruins release, Symphonica (Tzadik)(1998), the group decided to stretch out and expand their sound to include a keyboardist, two female vocalists and more extended song structures. The result was an album that almost sounded like a “regular” progressive rock album, with long songs of instrumental interplay and keyboard noodling that sometimes seemed to stretch on a little too long. The duo released two more projects in 1998, Ketsunoana (Stick Figure), a collaboration with American guitarist Ron Anderson, (Ruins and Anderson would go on to work together again on the 2001 album Big Shoes) and Vrresto (Magaibutsu). The latter album saw the band mellow out their sound a bit, and saw bassist Sasaki experiment with connecting his bass to MIDI-triggered electronics to expand the sound the two could produce among themselves.
The duo's next release, 2000's Pallaschtom (Magaibutsu), was a return to the just bass and drums set up, though on a re-released later version of the album, three medleys were tacked on to the end of the album, where the band sped through nearly a hundred recognizable themes and melodies from classical, hard rock and progressive rock, respectively, in less than three minutes per medley! It's safe to say Ruins took themselves seriously as musicians, but not necessarily the songs they performed. Ruins next released a live document of a show performed in their native Japan in 2000, Mandala 2000: Live At The Kichijoji Mandala II (Tzadik)(2001) that showcased their lightning fast fusion of avant punk, progressive rock and free rock, and were joined on a few songs by electric violinist Katsui Yuji. A second live album by Ruins was released in 2002, Live In Guang Zhou – China (Noise Asia), another excellent document of the band live, though it did repeat some of the same tracks from the Japanese concert. Ruins also collaborated with famed underground Japanese guitarist Keiji Haino on the album Knead (Tzadik)(2001) and later on the album New Rap (Tzadik)(2006). Another album was released in 2002, the new collection Tzomborgha on former Faith No More vocalist Mike Patton's left-field rock and avant-garde label Ipecac. The album was the duo's usual combination of break-neck tempos combined with frightening musicianship and falsetto nonsense vocals, and even included two medleys of songs by Black Sabbath and Mahavishnu Orchestra, (just in case you had any question where they were coming from). Bassist Hisashi left the band in 2003 after suffering an injury, and Yoshida has carried on alone under the name Ruins-alone and has collaborated with bassist Jesse Krakow under that name. It's not yet known if Yoshida plans to continue Ruins as a band, or not.