Ruth are the featured artist on the snazzy new Minimal Wave Records site. You can buy their 25th Anniversary Deluxe Special Edition Reissue of Polaroïd/Roman/Photo from Minimal Wave by clicking the image of Dan Devine above…

Uncut Magazine, Dec 2010

Minimal Synth scene report inc. releases from Angular, Minimal Wave and Mannequin Records.

“Dolorous” - what a great word :-)

RUTH - ‘Polaroïd/Roman/Photo’ (25th Anniversary Deluxe Special Edition Reissue)

After the acclaim and success of the ‘Cold Waves and Minimal Electronics’ compilation earlier this year, we are proud to announce the release of a 25th Anniversary Deluxe Special Edition reissue from one of the artists featured on this collection. Ruth’s ‘Polaroïd/Roman/Photo’ was consistently noted as one of the standout tracks from the comp, which received glowing reviews across the board; e.g. Pitchfork – 8.2, NME – 8/10, Vice – 9/10.

This wasn’t the case the first time around though. Originally released on Paris Records in 1985 Ruth’s LP sold just 50 copies and was relegated to obscurity until the track “Polaroïd/Roman/Photo” started appearing on bootlegs and compilations in the early 00’s, slowly becoming the cult synth pop classic it is nowadays. An original copy goes for upwards of £300 on ebay and Ruth are a shining light from an oft forgotten music scene that is becoming increasingly influential today.

The deluxe limited edition - on transparent scarlet heavyweight vinyl - features a 12 page booklet of lyrics and photos plus download codes for a digital version of the album which includes six bonus tracks.

Released 22nd November. Click the picture to pre-order!

Once in Paris I began the search for Ruth at Bimbo Tower, a specialist record shop  where No Wave is divided into several subsections and they don’t have any records from before 1979. My kind of place. Everything is in mint condition and nothing is absurdly priced even when it should be. It was found tucked away on a little backstreet and with no shopfront so you have to know it’s there in order to find it. I browsed around for a bit and eventually asked if they were familiar with Ruth’s ‘Polaroid/Roman/Photo’. It turned out that he was a regular in the shop himself and played music with two of the guys that worked there. Score!

The next day I’m sat eating pasta with him and outlining my plans for a compilation of music that I really don’t have much knowledge of, just a desire to be involved somehow… Never before had I felt so strongly about a song that I had to meet its creator and buy them lunch. He explained how he’d ‘played’ the polaroid camera, and about how the track featured a singer that he had met the night before the recording. They stayed up all night together and she came to the studio the next day, sang on the track and then left, never to be seen or heard from again. It was this kind of romance that I imagined would be behind all of these songs, and the intrigue deepened.

In Bimbo Tower I discovered some more early 80’s European synth groups, mostly French, and I brought a clutch of records back to London with me that I played a lot over the next few months. One was a 12” by Mathematiques Modernes, one of the more popular acts of this time. A synth duo produced by French 80’s producer du jour, Jacno. I have a feeling that this song may have even charted upon its 1980 release. Entitled ‘Disco Rough’, here it is, click above to play.

This compilation has been in the making for about two years. I first heard Coldwave whilst making an album with my old band The Violets. Our producer Al O’Connell played us some obscure tracks that he’d been given by the French DJ and producer Ivan Smagghe who founded the industrial post-punk EBM group Black Strobe.
These songs had an immediate influence on our recordings, they hinted at groups like DAF that we were already into but there was a fragile and beautiful elegance about these songs that I became intrigued by. Primitive synths, Boss DR-55 drum machines and seductive French accents. Most of these bands released just one record, usually a single limited to a few hundred copies, before breaking up and fading into the deep backwater of discogs and ebay, survived only by an iconic black and white photo and three songs on a cassette tape.
I obsessed over these bands for months before it occurred to me that it might be possible to get them all together for a release that might grant them the recognition they never received the first time round. My favourite song to begin with was the track Polaroid/Roman/Photo by Ruth, an impossibly sexy soiree of horns, synths and a polaroid camera. I decided first to go to Paris and find Ruth in the hope that they would be the key to finding everyone else…

tbc…