Suicidegirls Roach Amsterdam Heart

The second of two collaborations with Kevin Braheny inspired by the desert, this album pays homage to the Edward Abbey book of the same title. It inadvertently became a memorial to that Southwestern nature writer when Abbey died shortly after the music was recorded. Featuring some powerful work by Michael Stearns, this album taps into the psychological depths of stark Southwestern landscapes through a subtle set of soundscapes depicting the hidden dangers, unseen gifts, and intoxication that the desert promises.

The second of two collaborations with Kevin Braheny inspired by the desert, this album pays homage to the Edward Abbey book of the same title. It inadvertently became a memorial to that Southwestern nature writer when Abbey died shortly after the music was recorded. Featuring some powerful work by Michael Stearns, this album taps into the psychological depths of stark Southwestern landscapes through a subtle set of soundscapes depicting the hidden dangers, unseen gifts, and intoxication that the desert promises.

A Soul Ascends is a majestic, deeply moving sonic suspension drawn from the essence of Steve Roach’s visionary ambient/electronic music. A vast and intimate holding-the-space of heart-centered serenity and compassion, the album couples the body to the eternal flow of a vaporizing weightlessness — back to a divine nothingness, the Tabula Rasa where everything began.

Steve Roach and Robert Rich are the most important electronic ambient musicians in the U.S. SoMa is their highly acclaimed follow-up to their first collaboration, Strata. Soma, according to Vedic writings, is "a drink made from plants which could help one commune with the gods." It is also the Greek word for body. So they designed this CD to be a vehicle to traverse between the physical and spiritual worlds. It is deep stuff. The soundscape offers listeners the opportunity to pursue and achieve states of ecstasy. The only extracurricular involvement is from the souls of the music and the listeners. The psychoactive atmospheres penetrate the defenses of the spirit and use Earth's resonant rhythms to tap into the biorhythms. From that point forward, Rich and Roach are in control. Listeners will go to the far reaches of the netherworld and stay within the limits set by this duo.

Into the Majestic starts 2021 on high note of radiant optimism while traversing a consequential moment in time. Relentless in connecting to a stillpoint within, the title track Into the Majestic was premiered and filmed as it unfolded in Steve’s October 24th 2020 livestream Timeroom concert. The shimmering multidimensional inner weavings are at once delicate and expansive, showing the way forward with grace and resoluteness.

Inanna’s Dream is a multi-instrumental ambient sonic odyssey of pure emotion and enchantment. Through the six electroacoustic offerings, feelings of yearning, vulnerability and epiphany are infused into a heart and soul stirring expression that accesses the collective well of human experience. The alchemical blend of archaic and contemporary musical techniques and instruments, including the voice, activate a powerful opening into sacred space.

Masterfully joining the two worlds that define Steve Roach's signature styles, the 153-minute 2CD SANCTUARY OF DESIRE combines deep ambience and mesmerizing, spiral-like electronic forms in a majestic flow of stately elegance and breathtaking aural drift. Disc one explores a realm of suspended tranquility, sustained reflection and emotional resonance. Disc two soars into the mythic imagination by way of multi-dimensional mandala-like tapestries woven from Steve's mastery of analog-based synths textures, sequencer, and hovering atmospherics.

What Remains is a dynamic confluence of sonic worlds — four interconnected passages that venture from analog-sequencer driven elegant futurism, to yearning and mysterious tribal ambient, to conclude with the heart-wrenching, pure-atmospherics of the title track. This sonic odyssey reveals a masterful culmination of the different electronic musics Roach has developed and explored over the last forty years.

Actus Tragicus The words ‘art of dying’ sound strange to modern ears, perhaps. Although there are related philosophical, religious and ‘end of life’ health care, and much-debated legal concerns today surrounding the subject of dying, we moderns probably rarely, if ever, think of preparing for death as an art form. A central topic in sermons, hymns and contemplative literature, death and dying was a chief pastoral concern of the church of Johann Sebastian Bach’s day. Finding consolation and facing fears and anxieties near the time of death, and also as a part of everyday living, are arguably at the heart of the sacred vocal works of Bach, who is regarded by many as a kind of theologian in music.