Bing & Ruth, the ever-evolving project helmed by New York composer David Moore, has announced details of a new album, scheduled for release this summer. Entitled Species, the 7-track, 49-min record will be released on 17th July. 

+ ​Check to see if your local record store is stocking Species here +
+ You can pre-order and pre-save the new album on all platforms here +
+ You can pre-order Species from the 4AD Store here +

While on a surface level, Species is an exploration of the sonic possibilities of the Farfisa organ, aided only by a clarinet and double bass (played respectively by founding members Jeremy Viner and Jeff Ratner), the title Species is a nod to both humanity and humility – a devotion to the godly intuition with which we are all endowed, and the humbleness required of us to perceive it. It’s also about suspended time and trance; not just a steady movement from A to B, but as something that flows, meanders and eddies, like water.

“I suppose what interested me the most in putting this together was the concept of trance and what can happen to the listener by submitting to the wave of the thing,” Moore explains. “Upon reflection, I suppose what I was moving towards was a way to feel small - a way to feel deeply humble. I had always made music in search of some sort of inner peace, but I no longer cared so much to comfort myself.  I’d grown tired, it seemed, of looking inward. I wanted to look nowhere.”   

The album’s first single, ‘I Had No Dream’, is available today alongside visuals created by Derrick Belcham. Of the song and video Moore says, “When writing I seem to always be working towards the song’s final presentation - usually how it will sound on the end recording.  This forthcoming album, and particularly this song, differs in that I found myself instinctively leaning more towards the music’s live performance. In that spirit it seems fitting to lead with this video of Jeff and Jeremy and I playing ‘I Had No Dream,’ the third track on ‘Species’. We look forward to sharing all of our new music live as soon as we can all be in the same room together again, but until then we hope you enjoy this first offering.”    

Species, and the transcendental state it embodies, was inspired by two recent loves of Moore’s: the desert and long-distance running. Briefly relocating from his New York base to Point Dume, between the Pacific Ocean and the desert, Moore was able to indulge in both passions, which in turn provided stimulus for new work. He says, “I’d found myself in places unfamiliar enough that I could easily lose all sense of direction, size and, more than anything, all sense of time. The music I was making became a kind of reflection of these intentional detachments - and a place to mirror that feeling of trance that had pushed them out in the first place.”

Further explaining the thought process behind the video, and its connection to this central theme of the album, Belcham explains, “for ‘I Had No Dream’, we decided to showcase the live performance aspect of the band. By using projectors, custom LED sources, sound frequency analysis, we created a visual plane to illustrate what was happening sonically during each section of the song. Every element of the light is generated by some portion of the music. Shot through various reflective surfaces, the video attempts to define a clear arc away from the concrete simplicity of the room into an abstraction (invoked by the minimal trance-like elements of the music) and back again.”

Species Tracklist:

1. Body In A Room
2. Badwater Psalm
3. I Had No Dream
4. Blood Harmony
5. Live Forever
6. The Pressure Of This Water
7. Nearer

Bing & Ruth have had to postpone their previously scheduled Spring/Summer tour. They will now take place in August (North America) and December (Europe).

Tour Dates:

August
12th - Le Poisson Rouge, New York City NY, US
14th - Kings Barcade, Raleigh NC, US
15th - Contemporary Art Centre, Atlanta GA, US
17th - North Door, Austin TX, US
19th - Sons of Hermann Hall, Dalas TX, US
20th - Hotel Congress, Tuscon AZ, US
22nd - Lodge Room, Los Angeles CA, US
30th - Constellation, Chicago IL, US
31st - Marble Bar, Detroit MI, US

September
1st - Brothers Dressler, Toronto ON, CA
2nd - La Sala Rossa, Montreal QC, CA
3rd - Great Scott, Boston MA, US
4th - World Café Live, Philadelphia PA, US

December
4th - ZDB, Lisbon, PT
5th - CCVF, Giumaraes, PT
7th - Botanique, Brussels, BE
8th - TivoliVredenburg, Utrecht, NL
9th - Les Trois Baudets, FR
10th - Kings Place, London, GB
9th - St. Michael's, Manchester, GB