RON RUINS - BIG SHOES

When I bought this album, I didn't know much of anything about Ron Anderson or his music. I still really don't, and based on this album I'm not in a hurry to look into it further. What we're presented with here is one in a series of collaborations between Ruins (with Hisashi Sasaki on bass) and Ron Anderson, best known for his work with the bands Molecules and PAK, as far as I know.

This CD is, to me, a fairly uneven show. Much of the music is what I was expecting/hoping for from a project involving Ruins - fast, complex, and generally loud and crazy sounding. That's all fine and well, but I couldn't help but wish for some larger extra element (there is some slight change to the sound, added keyboards on some tracks and trumpet on at least one, and of course guitar), or even something which changed the style (see for example the Ruins albums with Derek Bailey). This album could often pass off as a Ruins album with no collaborators if I didn't know better - the guitar tones have been present in Sasaki's playing before thanks to his absurdly large collection of effect pedals. That being said though, there are some different tracks on the album. Take for example the track Cathedral - as the name suggests, it's quite a lot more peaceful than I would have expected from any album with Yoshida and friends. He actually plays guitar on the track instead of drums, and if I'm right there is no bass, only guitar and trumpet. Unfortunately, this kind of track doesn't work as well here for me as the softer tracks do on Yoshida's collaborations with Haino Keiji. In addition to that, there are some tracks which sound more improvised, which didn't happen very often on Ruins albums - sometimes on live albums, sure, but not often even then. This kind of track is generally pretty good here, as Ron does seem to be more at home with this kind of playing than in more structured settings.

This definitely isn't a bad album. It's still got some very high quality playing from everyone involved, especially the boys of Ruins, and there are some gems among the tracks. There are just about as many tracks which I don't think are that great though, and after a while the album starts to drag in my opinion. I don't think it's exactly one of their better releases, as I've heard them being much more creative and/or aggressive on albums with no collaborators. Because of that, I feel like the album is worthy of a three star rating. If you're a fan of the style of music presented by Ruins but want to hear a (slightly) different take on it, then this is a decent place to go. I'd say it's a non-essential addition to your collection though - you aren't missing anything truly amazing without it, as far as I'm concerned. If you really want to hear some of Yoshida's best works with a guitarist, I'd suggest checking out either Korekyojinn or his collaborations with Uchihashi Kazuhisa or Haino Keiji before looking to this album.