For nearly two decades, Ruth Goller has been turning heads as an East London-based improvising electric bassist for Melt Yourself Down, Sons of Kemet, Let Spin, Alabaster DePlume and Bex Burch’s Vula Viel among many others. Her own recent projects have centred on a unique approach involving spaced-out yet hauntingly melodic vocal layering and inventive electric bass sonics with left-field influences across the board from the jazz, rock, electronic and classical worlds. First the quirkily brilliant Skylla (2021) and last year’s SKYLLUMINA on the maverick Chicago label International Anthem, which had something of a Syd Barrett vibe about it. The latter featured various contributions on drums and justly thrust her work into the spotlight. Max Andrzejewski was one of the guest drummers and he’s one half of the Berlin-based duo Training who collaborate with Goller on this new recording Threads to Knot.

If you have an interest in creative processes, the concept here described in the press text as ‘cadaver exquis’ is a musical tag/relay with one person’s few notes a jumping off point before passing it to the next. But it’s outcomes that matter and Threads to Knot entirely delivers on that front.

Opener ‘Threadfin’ erupts with squawking sax improv and grinding electrics before a calmer ambience emerges.

Among the highlights are the stimulating spell-like math rock of ‘finback’; the Eno-like attention to minimalistic low-fi sonic detail and tender melodies on ‘backlog’; Goller’s Hendrix-charged bass and Johannes Schleiermacher’s hymnal sax sounding like a more zen Albert Ayler on the haunting ‘logline’; the glitchily propulsive electronica meets scorching Melt Yourself Down-ish manic dance of ‘Lineage’, while Schleiermacher’s sampling loops and explosive free jazz sax is displaced by a hypnotic chant-like melody on ‘Longingly’; in Goller’s world it seems you have to first ride the storm before discovering an inner peace. That contrasting ebb and flow is a striking characteristic of this very absorbing collaboration of like-minds.