Name: Shrunken Elvis
Members: Spencer Cullum, Sean Thompson, Rich Ruth
Interviewee: Rich Ruth
Nationality: American
Current release: Shrunken Elvis's self-titled debut album is out now via Western Vinyl.
Recommendation for Nashville, USA: The Green Ray is a phenomenal book shop.
Things I am passionate about but rarely get to talk about: You don’t want to get me started …

If you enjoyed this Shrunken Elvis interview and would like to stay up to date with the band and their music, visit them on bandcamp.



Where does the impulse to create something come from for you? What role do often-quoted sources of inspiration like dreams, other forms of art, personal relationships, politics etc play?

For me personally, the creative impulse has been lurking beneath the surface for most of my musical life. Particularly once I figured out how to have autonomy and record ideas and find a workflow through that route.

The traditional and aforementioned sources of inspiration play very little factor in how I work. I prefer to treat creative work as more of a daily and meditative practice where whatever comes out, is what comes out. It often takes a lot of time after the fact to interpret what meaning or inspiration a piece has.

In the case of Shrunken Elvis, our personal relationship is the foundation of the project so its hard not to acknowledge its inherent inspiration.

For you to get started, do there need to be concrete ideas – or what some have called a 'visualisation' of the finished work? What does the balance between planning and chance look like for you?

If I’m working on my own pieces typically the balance is like 80% chance and 20% planning - the planning comes after the chance has already dominated the real estate.

For Shrunken Elvis though there was more emphasis on a plan - largely based on the natural restrictions that sort of defined this project. It was born out of the limitation of three guys playing a set of each of our original pieces with only the three of us crammed into a tight vehicle.

Where we’ve often relied on drums, bass, and other auxiliary players - Shrunken Elvis (Spencer, Sean, and myself) is the three of us with guitars, pedal steel, some synths, and a sampler. Those perimeters wound up guiding the process but I wouldn’t really call it a visualization beyond the sonic palette.

Is there a preparation phase for your process? Do you require your tools to be laid out in a particular way, for example, do you need to do 'research' or create 'early versions'?

For Shrunken the preparation was the crash course of touring Europe and the UK as a trio in a station wagon. For the record there was very little preparation or research or demos for that matter.

The only real tool that was laid out was that we tracked all of the guitars through the same Bugera amplifier.

Do you have certain rituals to get you into the right mindset for creating? What role do certain foods or stimulants like coffee, lighting, scents, exercise or reading poetry play?

This obviously changes over time but I know that Spencer and I often like to get things going pretty early in the morning.

I’m personally not super ritualistic in my creativity beyond the intention of trying to stay at it as regularly as possible.

Sean exercises more regularly than Spencer and I. I’d also venture to say that he immerses himself in studying his inspirations a great deal, which I find inspiring - like a form of exercise.

For your debut album, what did you start with? If there were conceptual considerations, what were they?

For the most part we started with sketches that I would write on my Elektron Digitakt - it’s a drum machine / sequencer / sampler machine that we jokingly call the brain. It makes it possible for us to play more complex fully groove based music live.

I originally turned to this piece of technology because it’s small and powerful and we were extremely limited with how we could perform my music overseas as a trio.

So that was the main conceptual consideration - make an instrumental album, as a trio, that can be performed live, while combining our mutual love of krautrock, prog, 90’s house and trip hop, and all things psychedelic.

Many writers have claimed that as soon as they enter into the process, certain aspects of the narrative are out of their hands. Do you like to keep strict control or is there a sense of following things where they lead you?

For most all of my work and for Shrunken Elvis it’s all about following things where they lead. After that I maintain strict control on what happens, if that makes sense.

Find and follow all of my natural creative impulses, enlist others to do the same, then enact strict control to shape a narrative and movement out of wherever the first part leads.

There are many descriptions of the creative state. How would you describe it for you personally? Is there an element of spirituality to what you do?

It is almost entirely spiritual for me. It’s a flow state, it’s meditation, it’s repetition. That can change with close collaboration - which is ultimately the basis of Shrunken Elvis, but I’d like to think the outcome still achieved all of those pieces.

It’s also a lot of fun - I think the creative state should be fun and not too rigorous.

Once a piece is finished, how important is it for you to let it lie and evaluate it later on? How much improvement and refinement do you personally allow until you're satisfied with a piece? What does this process look like in practise?

That is a tricky question as I think it varies a great deal.

With Shrunken Elvis, I would say there was very little refinement once we wrote and recorded it quickly - but that goes back to the natural perimeters we designed. We wrote most of it together and tried not to overthink it.

With my own pieces I could spend a year or two listening and listening and tinkering and listening back. It’s dangerous but helpful for me.

How do you think the meaning, or effect of an individual piece is enhanced, clarified or possibly contrasted by the EPs, or albums it is part of? Does each piece, for example, need to be consistent with the larger whole?

Yes absolutely. The idea of the album as a full piece has always been extremely important to me. It’s a principle that guides me more than almost anything - if the pieces don’t fit together as a unit, it won’t work.

Though Sean and Spencer and I have not talked about it explicitly, I know they feel the same way - because all of their records have that cohesion. The Shrunken LP has it too.

I have to be happy sitting and listening to the 30-45 minute body of work over and over again.

Music and the accompanying artwork are often closely related. Can you talk about this a little bit for your current project and the relationship that images and sounds have for you in general?

The relationship between artwork and a finished record is extremely important to all three of us. Look at Sean and Spencer’s album art - it’s incredible.

For Shrunken Elvis, our trusted friend Max (Dismal Alchemy) made visuals that just fit the music and ideas in such a perfect way. He somehow managed to channel minimalist ECM album covers alongside a very 70’s colorful abstraction that feels organic and couldn’t be a better fit.

I even asked him to mimic the YES font and he did it precisely on the back cover.

After finishing a piece or album and releasing something into the world, there can be a sense of emptiness. Can you relate to this – and how do you return to the state of creativity after experiencing it?

I can only answer this personally, but nothing about it is empty. It’s the final stage before completely moving on to the next endeavor which signifies closure and a successful mission.

It also means I probably won’t listen to the project again for 4 or 5 years.

I would love to know a little about the feedback you've received from listeners or critics about what they thought some of your songs are about or the impact it had on them – have there been “misunderstandings” or did you perhaps even gain new “insights?”

I mostly only make instrumental music. It tends to pretty free, psychedelic, and abstract. I am comfortable with it meaning whatever it means to people.

There’s enough words and stimulation in the world today - I don’t think you can misunderstand this music. If Shrunken Elvis resonates it’s because it feels good.

Creativity can reach many different corners of our lives. Do you personally feel as though writing a piece of music is inherently different from something like making a great cup of coffee? What do you express through music that you couldn't or wouldn't in more 'mundane' tasks?  

Music is like smell. You can talk about it, you can think about it, you can describe it, but you really can never actually put it into words. It’s abstract and essential to humanity in a way that’s different than anything else in the universe.

Writing music is such a wide, varied spectrum that any comparison is not going to be accurate or do it justice. Whatever was going through Wayne Shorter’s mind was different than what was going through Haruomi Hosono’s and those are both surely different than making a cup of coffee.