Elliot Galvin - The Ruin (2025 Gearbox Records Vinyl LP)

Elliot Galvin - The Ruin | Vinyl LP - 2025 Gearbox Records (GB4005)

Elliot Galvin started building this album from a specific source: iPhone recordings of improvisations he had played on his first piano, a childhood instrument bought with money left by his late grandfather. Those recordings became the material from which everything else on the record was constructed — the strings, the bass, the drums, the electronics, the flute. The album takes its title from "The Ruin," an Old English poem from the 9th century about the former glory of an unnamed city reduced to rubble. Galvin used it as a frame for something more personal: a response to contemporary England, to the landscape around the Medway towns where he grew up, and to the idea that all of us move through the ruins of previous selves.

The structure is cyclical. The record opens with solo piano and closes with solo piano, the final track ending with a reversed recording of the opener played forwards. Between those poles, the ensemble assembles gradually and crumbles away again. Ruth Goller plays bass and voice on six tracks; Sebastian Rochford plays drums; the Ligeti Quartet — Freya Goldmark, Patrick Dawkins, Richard Jones and Val Welbanks — plays strings on five tracks. Shabaka Hutchings plays bamboo flute on "Gold Bright" (A4) and shakuhachi on "High and Wide" (B1). "Gold Bright" is the one track where the whole ensemble plays together — Hutchings recorded his bamboo flute solo in a single take without hearing the music beforehand. The record was co-produced by Rochford and recorded and mixed by Sonny Johns. Mastered by Caspar Sutton-Jones.