For my proto-prog Japa-noise dollar, it just don't get no better than Ruins. Since 1985, this King Crimson- and Mahavishnu Orchestra-inspired bass/drums duo has been prolific as hell, putting out as many as five albums in a single year. I got hip to them in about '96, when I picked up a Ruins/Schlong split 7". I'd never even heard of Ruins at the time, but it was an immediate mindblow, plus that record also served to cast Schlong, one of my all-time favorite bands, in a whole new light. After hearing Ruins, I began to regard Schlong as less of a Oly-fueled exercise in ridiculousness (ridiculous in the good sense, you understand), and more of a avant/prog band, if you follow me. Not that Ruins and Schlong sound much alike; they really don't. But their approach is the same: combining feral virtuosity and almost absurd levels of technicality and complexity with straight-up white noise and other ear-piercing sounds. But whereas Schlong was mostly about juxtaposing country, jazz, ska, etc with frantic noise, Ruins is pretty much unilaterally hyperactive, complex and harsh. Drummer Yoshida Tatsuya is a flurry of crazy drum fills and hi-hat clutches, while bassist Sasaki Hisashi is the master of insane high-speed distorto-bass riffles. The intermittent vocals are comprised of alternately guttural and chirpy sounds, and incidentally, are sung in a language that they made up, hence song titles like "Chittam Irangaayo," "Issighirudoh," and "Wanzhemvergg." You're constantly wondering how in the hell someone could come up with songs like that, much less memorize them, since each Ruins song is essentially comprised of sixty or so little song snippets that somehow fit together. One of the last songs on Tzomborgha is called "Sabbath Medley Reversible," and you'd think from the track name that it would be pretty intriguing. And it is, but ten or twelve Sabbath riffs strung together, in the context of this mind-breaking of an album, is almost a regressive step. It's really the low point of the album, just because the album is such a epic effort in the first place, and to hear these amazingly freaky players tone it down and play overly familiar stuff like Black Sabbath is a bit of a letdown, albeit a very minor one. Tzomborgha is really quite fascinating and far-out stuff, front to back, particularly if you, like me, get off on really precise and complex music. By the way, Tzomborgha is an excellent starter album for someone looking to get into Ruins, as it's slightly more accessible and less shrill than many of their other releases. Postscript- 3.June 2004: I got an e-mail from a fellow who related the following: "Chittam Irangaayo" is in Tamil, not a made-up language. It's a cover of a song by south India fusion violinist L Shankar.