Seeds in the Cosmos: Eddie Ruscha V

Cosmos, his release on our ever evolving Music To Watch Seeds Grow By, follows a path that Ruscha began exploring with his 2018 release, “Who Are You”, on Beats In Space and continued through recent works like ‘Green Mirror’ under his alias Secret Circuit and ambient pieces for the “Slow Show” performances. Each project has been a cultivation season that invites listeners to pause, observe, and connect with cycles of natural emergence.

With ‘Cosmos’ now out in the ahem, wild, we sat down with Ruscha to explore the fertile ground where electronic composition meets organic growth, and how his work across visual art, music, and performance creates a synthesis where space, sound, and natural movement find their harmonious home.

You approach instruments as “living entities”. Can you elaborate on what this means to you, especially in the context of the “Cosmos” release?

I think it comes down to how you interact with something. I’m always in collaboration with an instrument. I’m finding places it can take me or influence a movement. Interacting with a plant or garden or some plants on your porch can be a similar experience where you guide things along or arrange for desired effect. I usually operate like this but it was lovely to really pay attention to it.

You’ve described your creative process as understanding “when to tend and when to let things just be and evolve.” How does this philosophy manifest in your approach to composing “Cosmos”?

Modular synthesis, for instance, one can set up an evolving sound that can take hours or even longer to change and evolve. Plants can be a representation of time. A lot of people put a plant off to the side in their synthesizer tutorial videos and while this almost seems like a silly trend, I feel there’s something deeper about the relationship between the two.

The release is framed around ideas of nurture, patience, and gradual transformation. What personal experiences or observations inspired this particular sonic exploration?

Growing a plant brings all kinds of daily interactions. Moving it into more or less sun, watering, trimming leaves, etc. These all happen over a relatively long period of time. If you had a time lapse video of the whole thing it may be closer to a music making experience. In a way, composing music in the studio is almost like playing with time. Like an elaborate magic trick. There’s listening to the music, and making the music.

Your work spans multiple disciplines – visual art, music, and performance. How do these different creative practices inform each other, particularly in a project like “Cosmos”?

There were moments where I was imagining an old nature film with burned out colors and star filters and I was using that as a kind of mind mood board. Then I find myself forgetting and just creating. When I’m painting I go through similar mood states. I also listen to a lot of music while I’m painting and if I look at a painting later, sometimes the music I was listening to comes into my head, which is a really interesting thing about music and how it hits you at a very profound deeper level.

You’ve referenced gardening as a metaphor. Do you see parallels between cultivating sound and cultivating plants? If so, what are they?

The concept behind the Seeds series really centres on creating a “space for contemplation.” What kind of mental or emotional landscape were you trying to create with this composition? (perhaps a small sketch/drawing of what you think the composition embodies)

I may have ended out diverging a bit from making more abstract longer form music, which is what I set out to do, but I had to follow the music and instead at certain moments I felt like I was capturing certain emotions or maybe even sadness of where humans are going and their relationship to the environment and plants. I didn’t want the emotional element to be too specific but rather have varied moods that can transform like how a shadow can pass over a plant or even a bright beam of sun. I did have in mind to have the music drift around like thoughts.

Can you walk us through your process of creating this piece? How did the composition emerge and take shape? 

I’m really instinctual. I find the act of exploring sound is one of my favorite things about making music. Melodies are fantastic as well but I’d say that the overall quality and mood of the combined sounds is one of the most important things for me. Rhythm is a whole other thing of course and different projects call for different things.

The release seems deeply connected to natural cycles. Were there specific natural phenomena or environments that influenced this work?

I did definitely try to relate to plants and their fragility and how they fit into the modern world and how humans often take them for granted. If you really spend time around a plant, you really realize how much power they have. If you stroll through a forest of trees or even if there are plants inside a room, you can perceive a definite cleaner more vital oxygen. They bring so many gifts to humans, all we have to do is take care of them.

Could you create visual references for this album…

Picture 1 in this article here:

Eddie Ruscha
Joshua Tree(s) With Bee, 2024
Acrylic on canvas
24 x 24 x 1 1/2 in (61 x 61 x 3.8 cm)
Photography: Chris Young

Picture 2:

Francesca Gabbiani & Eddie Ruscha
The Seeds, 2025 (detail view)
Acrylic and hand-colored paper on paper
24 x 18 in (61 x 45.7 cm)
Photography: Courtesy of Wilding Cran Gallery

Picture 3:
Eddie Ruscha
Joshua Tree(s) With Bee, 2024 (detail view)
Acrylic on canvas
24 x 24 x 1 1/2 in (61 x 61 x 3.8 cm)
Photography: Chris Young

Picure 4 (below)

Francesca Gabbiani & Eddie Ruscha
The Seeds, 2025
Acrylic and hand-colored paper on paper
24 x 18 in (61 x 45.7 cm)
Photography: Courtesy of Wilding Cran Gallery

Finally, could we get a picture of your garden and your favourite plant.