Steve Roach - The Desert Collection 1

1. Ghost Train 7:21
2. Flatlands 4:50
3. The Breathing Stone 6:47
4. The Eternal Expanse 17:52
5. The Ribbon Rails of Promise 15:05
6. Specter 9:31
7. New Moon at Forbidden Mesa 5:10
8. The Slow Turning 7:15

The Land Of Extremes:
My daily life and creative motivations are constantly infused with the relationship that has evolved for me within this land of extremes. The expansive beauty, harsh and dramatic, still and quiet, it's all here. While much of my music is not directly about the desert, the constant influence of this land that is my spiritual home is the calibration tone I set my life to. It continues to burn away the insignificant and illuminate with a perfect light what matters.
The Desert Collection:
Since before I was making music, I was making mix-tapes (first on 8-track and then cassettes) of road music for drives through the SoCal desert and mountain backroads. The music soundtrack to these drives would somehow play to where the dynamic pieces would time out with dramatic shifts in the landscapes, most always by chance and always making the moment larger than ordinary life. I love the freedom of driving—alone, in the Southwest with music. It unfurls the knotted mind and cleanses the palette for new creative thoughts to emerge over the drone of the engine mixed with a well-crafted set of music. It seems to propel the car towards the horizon as the sun sets or rises. Countless numbers of my albums have been evaluated, mapped-out and road tested over thousands upon thousands of miles over the years. It's true to say this mix-tape was 30 years in the making. When I hit play on this soundtrack on the way out of Gila Bend recently heading west, thermometer at 105 an hour before sunset, the sky was bleeding orange and red. The first track on THE DESERT COLLECTION emerged. and so did the chills and wet eyes as I was feeling those non-motorized Western travelers from not so long ago -- like me -- looking to "go west". On-board the Ghost Train indeed.