Thierry Muller, who previously released a couple of
avant-garde electronics records as
Ilitch, came back in 1985 with this new project,
Ruth, which oddly enough does not include
Muller's
Ilitch collaborator,
Ruth Ellyeri. At first glance,
Ruth's
pop sensibilities and up-tempo rhythms seem to be a 180-degree about-face from the bruising soundscapes of
Ilitch, and yet there is still a heavy use of
electronics and certainly a lot of creativity to make this more than just dance music. A similar analogy might be
Cabaret Voltaire's shift in the early '80s from its original distorted
industrial music to much cleaner sounds with a dance beat and female vocals, often spoken, but still retaining some earlier
avant-gardisms.
Ruth's music falls somewhere in the
new wave techno-
pop dance music camp, though with enough oddness that it doesn't come off as some slick sellout.
"Waiting for Mabelle" from
Ilitch's
10 Suicides is even reworked here as an upbeat
avant disco number, smoothed of all the rough edges.
Marc Duconseille's horn arrangements on the opening track,
"Thriller," as well as the title track, add a cinematic quality to the music. The haunting cover of
Can's
"She Brings the Rain" focuses more on textures, as the intensity builds through the song, hinting more at
Muller's earlier work, as does the much longer track
"Tu m'Ennuies," with
spoken word over keyboard squall. The CD also throws in some bonus tracks. Of these, the piece
"Sans Mot" as well as the short hidden track at the end of the CD are in the
experimental vein of
Ilitch, and both quite good, whereas the two versions of the title cut, one an early demo of it without vocals, seem more like filler. ~ Rolf Semrpebon
