If you can name every band, project and musician Ruth Goller has played with or alongside, you deserve a gold star for effort. There are quite a few. The bassist, singer and composer has worked with Shabaka Hutchings in the band Melt Yourself Down and with Bex Burch in the Vula Viel project. »Skyllumina« is her second solo album after »Skylla« in 2021 and the first to be released on International Anthem. On each of the ten songs, Goller works with different drummers, including Tom Skinner of The Smile, Seb Rochford, Frank Rosaly and Bex Burch.
Ruth Goller is a jazz musician. The term »jazz« covers a wide musical field where everything from Dixieland to free improvisation can be found. In this sense, »Skyllumina« is a jazz album, but it sounds more like the South Tyrolean musician has isolated microfine sequences from slowcore-ambient-folk tracks and used them to create her fragile sound constructions. She puts her angelic voice on top of that, which structurally produces something that can be described as jazz singing. The fascination of this music lies in the unnerving Derek Bailey-like quality of the percussive accompaniment and the strange melodiousness of the vocals.
