Steve Thorne is now one of progs leading composers, his direct honest and almost poetic delivery elevates him to a prog scholar, the musicianship as always is beyond reproach and only his very private persona has prevented him from being a household name in our genre.
While Thorne has sometimes been accompanied by a variety of artists from the prog scene in the past, this is no longer the case over the last few albums. No John Mitchell, Gary Chandler, Martin Orford or Tony Levin this time, but a more or less permanent backing band with drummer Kyle Fenton and guitarist Geoff Lea, although Big Big Train drummer Nick D’Virgilio (NdV) makes a guest appearance, as he did on the last album. But the apparent lack of star quality does not detract from the music: Thorne is a gifted songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and singer…
Reflections in Repose captures the pure essence of Steve Roach's ever-deepening intimate embrace of silence, breath, rich harmonic inventiveness, and shifting liminal states; it's a sound and style completely unique to his electronic/ambient vision. Created over two evenings at the close of 2023, the music was recorded in the same sequenced flow as presented on the two discs’ 116 minutes. The five long-form tracks were performed on a single instrument - the Oberheim OB-X8 - the modern equivalent of the iconic Oberheim OB-8 which Steve used 40 years ago in the making of his classic piece "Structures from Silence.”