Roach, Steve

Artist: Steve Roach & Erik Wollo
P: 2008
This is one of those releases that comes along every now and then where all the elements merge in alignment and a kind of magical sonic-musical alchemy occurs, taking the listening experience to a whole other level -- the kind of experience where when it's over, you immediately want to hit Play again.
With these veteran electronic composers' combined experience of 60 years, the resulting STREAM OF THOUGHT experience can be described quite simply as mind-altering and soul-quenching. This release stands apart from the extended immersive long-form tracks of recent releases. Presented as a continuous flow, the metaphor of sitting on stream's edge while fully engaged with the present moment is the appropriate context to experience the fluid ebb and mercurial flow of this streaming living soundworld.
Starting on two continents and two very different atmospheric conditions -- Erik in Norway and Steve in Arizona -- the foundation of their similar ages, musical inspirations, sonic inclinations, and a mutual respect for each other's work started the collaboration in early 2007. The most formative aspect of the collaboration occurred this summer with Erik's visit to the Timeroom in Arizona for final recording, arrangements and editing. The approach to the final structure was more in alignment with that of film editing, where the sense of time and pacing was consciously aimed at activating a powerful visual-auditory reaction and visceral experience. This is an inspired release in the best true sense of the word. Relax and float downstream as tranquil drifts, passionate rapids, midnight star gazing and blazing sunsets await on this ride by two masters of the genre.

Artist: Steve Roach & Erik Wollo
P: 2011
This is the sound of big skies, open roads and soaring imaginations, all pulling one towards the next destination with grace and beauty. The artists’ roles are clear on this one. With Steve on analog sequencing, electronic percussion and most of the zones and atmospheres, Erik focuses on his processed, textural, and melodic guitar and his Roland guitar synth. It strikes a perfect balance of the artists’ two distinct styles.
The project was started in early 2010, and shifted into laser focus when Erik came to Tucson for the SoundQuest Fest. After the concert, the two holed-up in The Timeroom for a few days and channeled the energy from the fest, working non-stop towards completion.
The sound is vibrant, full of shimmering light and saturated with optimism. With both artists each having devoted over 30 years to their art, this set of five pieces flows with the understanding and skill that comes from this experience, bringing their best to the table in the true spirit of collaboration.

Artist: Steve Roach & Frank Beissel
P: 2022
Welcome to the Nautical Twilight -an atmospheric dark ambient deep dive from emerging synth artist Frank Beissel and electronic music pioneer Steve Roach. The project started as a mentorship with Steve over the last few years and developed into a fully-realized immersion into the depths of the serenity, mystery and subtle shifting sonic states of twilight perceptions.
The core of the pieces were created in the early dawn hours or during twilight, when the magic hour of the day's light fades to or appears from darkness. Throughout the 71 minutes, the music perfectly captures these ephemeral moods. Much of the album was carved from a vast range of analog and digital hardware synths and Eurorack modular systems. Created primarily in realtime sessions at Beissel’s New Mexico studio, the final production, arrangement and additional brushstrokes were performed at Steve’s Timehouse studio in Baja Arizona.
Frank Beissel has created and evolved his music for over 10 years, building towards this debut release. His visceral connection to the soundcurrent was nourished from years of listening to and learning from the classics in electronic and ambient music. These seeds were planted early on starting with Music From the Hearts of Space and Musical Starstreams along with the influences of film soundtracks. His connection to the dramatic natural beauty and power of the US southwest is another vital piece of the story.. The five extended sound paintings of Nautical Twilight ebb and flow through the light, shadow and darkness with a graceful arc that could easily play into infinity. 

Artist: Steve Roach & Jeffrey Fayman
P: 2002 / 2022
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.
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 and augmented by Fripp on three the combined effect unleashes the primal forces of with a boiling undercurrent of rich, transporting textures.    
Recorded at Grandma's Warehouse & The Timeroom, Tucson, AZ, USA.
Composed and produced by Steve Roach and Jeffrey Fayman.
Jeffrey Fayman & Momodou Kah - percussion.
Robert Fripp - guitar on track 1,6 & 7.
Steve Roach - guitar, synthesizer, Shamanic percussio, Ocarinas.
Digitally remastered 2022

Artist: Steve Roach & Jorge Reyes
P: 2014
Conjuring images of a primal futurism, this alchemical blending-of-sound is a ceremonial offering to the forgotten gods. The Ancestor Circle is a new tribal-ambient-electronic collaboration, the first recording from Roach & Reyes since Vine ~ Bark & Spore (Timeroom 2000). This is the lost chapter of a long soulful journey that has taken twists and turns in its unfoldment. The music feels steeped in a frothy mind-altering blend, waiting for years as the potency increased. Roach & Reyes combined their instinctual nature — developed over almost a decade of worldwide live and studio adventures — leading up to the core of what became The Ancestor Circle. It is in this circle that their sound is unearthed from deep within their primordial soundworld, where prehistory meets future-tech creating a sound impossible to carbon date.
Like the audio artifacts of a lost tribe, the studio source recordings that form this album’s foundation were uncovered in 2013 on a cryptically-marked set of tapes. Created the week before Roach & Reyes’ May 2000 concert at Tucson’s Temple of Music and Art, this is their last joint studio project as Reyes passed on to The Ancestor Circle in 2009.
Roach comments, “Jorge is still very much alive here in the circle where we always met with an unspoken language of sound constantly moving through us. As I completed this music now, adding new elements and evolving the arrangement, I could feel Jorge’s spirit listening and interacting with me in the studio, offering feedback or sometimes making his guttural sounds of agreement like he would do in the past when we were deep in the process of carving on a mix. Just as in previous magical studio and stage experiences, we are in the circle once again.”
For thousands of years, music was created to assist entrance to expanded states of consciousness, support a passage of life, birth and death and invoke the gods, spirits, and allies. While the abundance of today’s entertainment-music has lost this powerful inner core, on The Ancestor Circle it is fully reinstated. This is a new “medicine music” as it should be: a probing visceral experience with the power to illuminate and shroud in mystery, digging deep into zones hidden within the psyche. It offers a potent realm of renewal for those seeking an unfiltered, cathartic rinse-down of today’s technological, modern world; it helps hit the reset button of perception.
Rising up from a dark shroud of night to embrace life, an ancient voice chants in serpentine ecstasy only to subside and hover next to a slow realm of eternal time drawn from electronics, percussion, prehispanic flutes, ocarinas, other acoustic instruments and silence. When the sound dissolves beyond recognition, a subconscious landscape arises, whispering of faded visions painted on stone, echoing on studio walls, of times gone by and times to come. Roach & Reyes are still here bringing us messages from the infinite.

Artist: Steve Roach
& Kevin Braheny
P: 1987 / 1990 
Combining Roach's ambiance with Braheny's lyrical passages on electronic woodwinds, Western Spaces was the first of two collaborations based on the landscapes of the American Southwest--in particular the Mojave and Sonoran deserts. The ambient "New Moon at Forbidden Mesa" contains hints of high winds, muted angelic voices, and echoing coyote howls, while "Desert Prayer," opening with a cathedralesque keyboard figure, introduces a synthesized vocal sound not unlike a violin or a Middle Eastern cantor. Where later Roach albums deal strictly in color and timbre, Spaces incorporates the idea of melodic text. The solo voices and arpeggiated figures become a narrative that knits together the streams of consciousness expressed through layers of drone and percussion--like a sidewinder leaving trails across the desert floor.
Western Spaces opens with The Breathing Stone, a spacious, shimmering aural excursion by Roach. Kevin Braheny's Desert Walkabout is a celebration of the sense of freedom inspired by the timeless beauty of arid vistas. The two synthesists collaborate on Desert Prayer, a lyrical reflection that conveys a reverence for the serenity of this uncompromising landscape. Roach and Brennan's In The Heat Of Venus explores the mystery and sensuality of the extreme conditions that are always at play with one's perception and personal integrity in the desert. Roach, Braheny, and Burmer join forces on the title cut, an expansive musical commentary on infinite visions of bare rock and cloudless skies.

Artist: Steve Roach + Loren Nerell
P: 2006 / 2009
TERRAFORM is the first full collaborative album for longtime friends Steve Roach and Loren Nerell. The two composers met in LA in 1981, back in the early days of the electronic music scene. It was a time when like-minded musicians who understood the importance of emerging technology were coming together in local clubs and performance venues to share what they knew and learn from one another. After years of friendship and occasional musical collaboration the two decided to convene in a relaxed setting to see what they could distill from a blending of their collective talents and individual styles to accomplish common aims. TERRAFORM emerged from their mutual desire to create an organic, surreal and deeply ambient environment of langorous humid soundscape enviroments. Through a labyrinth of studio techniques, a kind of audio terraforming was developed. Heavily textured and mood altering, the long uninterrupted flow seemingly slows time down by way of the surreal dark ambient soundforms found in much of Roach's work. Nerell brings the steamy, evanescent blend of his mutated Indonesian sources, a signature sound that defines his previous releases for Amplexus, Side Effects and Soleilmoon. Loren Nerell has studied gamelan music for the last 25 years, expanding and fine-tuning his mastery of Indonesia's unique indigenous musical traditions through performances and field work. During this time he has accumulated a large number of field recordings, many of which he uses in his compositions. This has evolved from simply using the material as-is, to an elaborate processing technique in which the material is taken to a point so far from its original source as to be unrecognizable. Along with their collaborative efforts Steve produced, mixed and provided art direction on this special release.Initial impressions from several listeners have referenced Brian Eno's seminal "On Land" recording.

Artist: Steve Roach
& Michael Stearns & Kevin Braheny
P: 1989    
DESERT SOLITAIRE picks up right where WESTERN SPACES left off, but adds Michael Stearns' own synthetic gigantism to the fiery Roach/Braheny cabal.
Opening with the awesome percussive magnetic fields of "Flatlands," the combined flair of all three sound technicians is brought to the fore: haunting pastel shades of electronics intensify a barren landscape made flesh by the cricketspeak of log drums and ticking digital chronometers. The somnambulent "Specter" is nine minutes of igneous ambience, Roach's cooing drones bespecked with rainshowers of dewey, shimmering synthdrops. "Highnoon" suggests a confrontation of sorts, gusty electronics forming great vortices that threaten to sandblast the desert floor back into the stone age. DESERT SOLITAIRE, like its title, maintains a palpable presence best experienced in a dark room frozen at sunset before a yawning chasm, the trio's cavernous sound sculptures the only true accompaniment.

Artist: Roach & M.Stearns & R.Sunsinger
P: 1995    
True shamanic music: Actual peyote and ayahuasca ceremonies recorded by Ron Sunsinger provide the foundation for this unique collaboration with Steve Roach, Ron Sunsinger and Michael Stearns.
Like the shamaninc medicine from which this music draws its inspiration, this is not for the weak at heart. The four directions provide a symbolic symmetry to this extraordinary recording. The artists also combine recordings they made together within a labyrinth of caves in New Mexico during a 2 week session completing the music, adding yet another ingredient to the vision invoking sonic broth .
Ron Sunsinger - Main Performer.
Steve Roach - Vocals, Multi Instruments, Main Performer, Electronics.
Michael Stearns - Vocals, Multi Instruments, Main Performer, Electronics.

Artist: Steve Roach + Mark Seelig
P: 2010
Prolific ambient innovator Steve Roach teams with Ph.D. shamanic practitioner / musician Mark Seelig to create a long-form piece of space-opening sound magic. Like the many fragrant and beautiful night-blooming plants which are host to mind-altering qualities, this 70-minute experience slowly blooms outwards with Mark’s vocal harmonic and Tuva-style overtoning intertwining within Steve’s zones and “terra” grooves. A slow motion magical blend is created in this nocturnal mist-filled realm. The power of the human voice is drawn forth in a primordial understanding and finds a perfect fusion with subterranean heartbeats, drones and zones swelling from the harmonic soil, gently urging the Nightblooming to increase its potency and allure.
Steve and Mark are intrepid travelers in the realms of expanded musical states; they have collaborated with shamanic percussionist Byron Metcalf on Mantram, Nada Terma, Disciple and Wachuma's Wave. This release settles into the sustained oceanic qualities of these powerful releases. Slow down, breathe deep, hear and feel the Nightbloom blooming inside.