Apr 5, 2020

Sundaze 2014

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Today's Artist is a longstanding leader in contemporary electronic music, composer and multi-instrumentalist,a onetime professional motorbike racer born 1955 in La Mesa, California,  drew on the beauty and power of the earth's landscapes to create lush, meditative soundscapes influential on the emergence of ambient and trance. Drawing from a vast, unique, deeply personal authenticity, his releases cover a wide range of dynamic styles all of which bear his signature voice. For 35 years the boundaries are constantly challenged in his work, ranging in style from pure floating spaces, analog sequencer music, primordial tribal, rhythmic ambient, dark ambient, long-form 'drift ambient,' and avant garde atonal ambient.....N'Joy

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A longstanding leader in contemporary electronic music, composer and multi-instrumentalist Steve Roach drew on the beauty and power of the Earth's landscapes to create lush, meditative soundscapes influential on the emergence of ambient and trance. Born in California in 1955, Roach -- inspired by the music of Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze, and Vangelis -- taught himself to play synthesizer at the age of 20. Debuting in 1982 with the album Now, his early work was quite reminiscent of his inspirations, but with 1984's Structures from Silence, his music began taking enormous strides. The album's expansive and mysterious atmosphere was partly inspired by the natural beauty of the southwestern U.S. Subsequent works, including 1986's three-volume Quiet Music series honed Roach's approach, his dense, swirling textures and hypnotic rhythms akin to environmental sound sculptures.

In 1988, inspired by the Peter Weir film The Last Wave, Roach journeyed to the Australian outback, with field recordings of aboriginal life inspiring his acknowledged masterpiece, the double-album Dreamtime Return. A year later, he teamed with percussionist Michael Shrieve and guitarist David Torn for The Leaving Time, an experiment in ambient jazz. After relocating to the desert outskirts of Tucson, Arizona, Roach established his own recording studio, Timeroom. In the years to follow, he grew increasingly prolific, creating both as a solo artist and in tandem with acts including Robert Rich, Michael Stearns, Jorge Reyes, and Kevin Braheny -- in all, he recorded close to two-dozen major works in the '90s alone, all of them located at different points on the space-time continuum separating modern technology and primitive music.

His album roster from that decade includes Strata (1991), Artifacts (1994), Well of Souls (1995), Amplexus (1997), and Dust to Dust (1998). Early Man was released on Projekt in early 2001, followed by one of his many collaborations with Vidna Obmana, Innerzone. Throughout the remainder of the 2000s, Roach remained extremely prolific. His release schedule included the Projekt titles Trance Spirits (with Jeffrey Fayman) and the quadruple-disc Mystic Chords & Sacred Spaces, Spirit Dome and Somewhere Else (with Obmana), Fever Dreams, Mantram, and Nada Terma (with Byron Metcalf and Mark Seelig), and the ongoing Immersion series, Arc of Passion, and Stream of Thought (with Erik Wøllo). He also self-released several titles on his own through Timeroom Editions.

Over the next decade, Roach would show no signs of slowing as he continued with a non-stop slew of new material under his own name, as well as collaborations and soundtrack work. Though new volumes of work appeared at a clip of more than three albums per year, standouts included more collaborations with Byron Metcalf, 2013's Future Flows, 2014's disparate releases of arid road trip music on The Desert Collection and ambient explorations of mortality and humanity on The Delicate Forever. Roach began constructing an extensive analog modular synthesizer system in 2014, and in 2015, the album Skeleton Keys was composed entirely using this setup. In 2016, Roach released two full-lengths with Robert Logan (the more rhythmic Biosonic and the serene drone album Second Nature), as well as solo efforts This Place to Be and Shadow of Time.

In concert, Steve creates transcendent electronic music emerging from an elemental instinctual mode. These events bring together an audience from around the country and as far away as Europe, all looking to experience the on-the-edge experience that erupts in the live setting. This makes Steve's concerts an entirely different experience from the recorded medium. With months of preparation absorbed into his system, evocative soundscapes blend with ecstatic rhythmic sections born from hands-on analog sound creation and sonic shapeshifting. The result is a direct transference of creative energy from the artist through his instruments out to the listener. Live performances are the place where Steve's music thrives, created at the leading edge of now.

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Roach's epic, DARKEST BEFORE DAWN, is the yin to QUIET MUSIC's yang, the bastard offspring of STRUCTURES FROM SILENCE, a near-sepulchral venture into endless voids, sonicism bereft of spatiality, infinity rendered corporeal. It is 'ambient' ripped from the fabric of spacetime to reveal the residual quiet of vacuum, a place that is universe-endless, foreboding, yet perversely compelling. It is music that even in its most skeletal state reveals the emotional heart that resides at the core of Roach's oeuvre, music of subtle moves, born out of expansive motions, a weaving miasma of ebony drones, of gradually unfurling bonecold synths faintly modulating. Shattering the bland, faceless categorization of a 'dark' ambient music, this unexpected work might well be one of the most unique in his vast catalog, a startling tone poem limned with visceral, confrontational beauty, this is a minimal immersive sound environment.



Steve Roach - Darkest Before Dawn (flac 242mb)

01 Darkest Before Dawn 74:00

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Trance Spirits by Steve Roach, Jeffrey Fayman, Robert Fripp and Momodou Kah represents the next step in genuine tribal ambient soundscapes. This amazing gathering of artists makes a magnificent leap into the future of acoustically-fused electronic music. Just the idea of Roach mixing it up with the likes of Robert Fripp should be enough to send the cognoscente off salivating, but this isn't exactly the penultimate meeting between big chief electric and crimson king. Five of the seven pieces are driven by a complex juggernaut of authentic African percussion, performed as long-form groove trance pieces by Fayman and Kah. As opposed to just using loops to conjure the desired mood, Trance Spirits is a real continuum of time, with subtle evolution within the tracks. Entwined with the shamanic / trance-inducing soundworlds created by Roach, and augmented by Fripp on three tracks, the combined effect unleashes the primal forces of nature with a boiling undercurrent of rich, transporting textures.Step over the threshold and see what's inside.



Steve Roach - Trance Spirits (with Jeffrey Fayman, Robert Fripp & Momodou Kah)  (flac 414mb)

01 Taking Flight 10:36
02 Trance Spirits 16:44
03 Off Spring 8:10
04 Seekers 7:20
05 The Calling 5:47
06 Year Of The Horse 13:34
07 In The Same Deep Water 11:42

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Step into the INNERZONE with surrealist soundsculptors Steve Roach and vidnaObmana on their first new collaborative work since 1999's quickly sold-out limited-edition box set ASCENSION OF SHADOWS. Venturing off safe and well travelled roads, the duo head into a chilling and beautifully haunting realm of shape-shifting soundscapes mixed with fascinating rhythmic forms. An unusual combination of instruments both acoustic and electronic can be heard on this compelling release. Central is the fujara, an Eastern European overtone flute, and the electric guitar — both creatively altered with a multitude of audio processing equipment to create a hybrid elecro-acoustic mix. The final merging of surreal acoustic, electronic elements and deep "inner" rhythms creates a bold new atmospheric music experience.



Steve Roach & Vidna Obmana - Inner Zone (flac  403mb)

01 At The Edge Of Everything 6:08
02 Strands 8:39
03 Cloud Space 6:18
04 Encounter Passage 2:13
05 Isolation 14:04
06 Spires 10:39
07 InnerZone 25:23

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All is Now, represents Roach's 24 years of nearly nonstop dedication to presenting live electronic music worldwide. This is a collection of selected live recordings from his 2002 tour of the U.S. including Sedona, Arizona, San Francisco, Oakland, and Portland, Oregon. CD One is a blend of four live concerts including a portion from the premiere party for Yoko Ono's "Yes" exhibit at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. CD Two is a complete set from a recent Sedona, Arizona concert, just as it occurred, with a full-house audience. All is Now is a dialogue of in-the-moment sonic excursions woven from elements of recent studio albums CORE, STREAMS & CURRENTS, EARLY MAN and INNERZONE, as well as a varied collection of new sounds and pieces created for these live concerts. The recordings are taken from both theater-size venues and non-traditional performance spaces, dramatically capturing the current state of Roach's living sonic vision. That vision taps into the roots of his mandala-like trance pieces, signature atmospherics and neo-tribal groovescapes, weaving it all into one continuous sonorous stream.

The All is Now excursions are an organic maelstrom of elemental earth sounds – didgeridoos, shamanic percussion, clay flutes and analog and digital synthesizers – sculpted by various synthetic treatments and evolving, real-time effects processing. These recordings also feature Steve's live debut on electric-guitar-triggered atmospherics on "The Infinite Heart", recorded in San Francisco. Roach's artistry as a sound sculptor is an inspiration, given the current status quo, paint-by-numbers mentality which relies on samples and generic synth presets.

As a sonic iconoclast, Roach's live music sets are challenging – certainly not for the faint of ear. Taking Roach's music into your reality tunnel is to traverse the core of an experimental electric storm. Through exotic textures, subterranean rhythms and expansive vistas All is Now reaches critical mass at many points throughout the two disks. For Roach, this releases is a significant step forward in the live experience as a living art form – a bridging of the studio and stage. Not a premeditated occurrence, the now energy of these concerts is what brings audience members from great distances. Roach prepares each concert by creating his palette through extensive hours of studio time leading up to the events, preparing possibilities, working on pieces and sounds. Yet when the time comes, the all-is-now attitude is what shapes the journey. Roach is able to connect to his audience through the sound, uninhibited by preconceptions. Roach clearly trusts his "in-the-moment" creative juju. He graciously accepts the here-and-now, soul-rattling concert experience as a natural occurrence. With All is Now, Roach invites us to join him on an exhilarating expedition to the edge and beyond.



Steve Roach - All Is Now (flac 366mb)

01 Part 1 - Oakland (Setting Course) 15:18
02 Part 2 - Portland 2:50
03 Part 3 - Portland 8:58
04 Part 4 - Portland (Life Meditation) 9:54
05 Part 5 - SFMOMA 13:02
06 Part 6 - San Francisco 3:37
07 Part 7 - Oakland 6:05
08 Part 8 - San Francisco (Infinite Heart) 10:35
09 Part 9 - SFMOMA 3:57

Steve Roach - Live In Sedona: Formations Creation (flac 371mb)

201 Part 1 11:32
202 Part 2 13:33
203 Part 3 3:42
204 Part 4 3:03
205 Part 5 7:18
206 Part 6 11:39
207 Part 7 6:22
208 Part 8 9:38

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