Steve Roach

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 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.

Landmass is a surreal shape shifting grand adventure in sound, morphing through a constantly altering perspective giving witness to the creation of iconic landscape formations, stone monuments and massive alluvial desert plains, and the occasional pyroclastic flow. Recorded live on the Star's End radio show in the WXPN studios in Philadelphia with a small audience in attendanace. This adventure in sound reaches into the primal forces of nature and channels them into a work of organic evolving momentum and deeply nunanced texture. Even the most massive non-rhythmic soundforms seem to be shifting and moving from the inside out, eventually giving birth to undulating rhythmic ecstasy. A stand-out release in a style defined by Roach.

Ascension of Shadows is a large-scale tribal groove atmosphere from Steve Roach and Vidna Obmana (Dirk Serries). This three-disc set runs the gamut of long-form composition. This chapter in the collaborative work between Steve Roach and Vidna Obmana is sure to delight those who appreciate the more serene, atmospheric side of their work together. On Ascension, the artists return to a more minimal core of sounds and approaches to reveal an atmosphere that flows for over three hours. As the acceleration toward the new century builds, this music offers a space for repose so needed these days.

Originally released in the mid-'80s on cassette and later in a truncated 2-CD edition, This current complete edition of Quiet Music (The Original 3-Hour Collection) presents this landmark album series exactly as Roach envisioned it.
Quiet Music is a collection of pieces created between 1983 and 1986 in respect for silence. The gentle electronics of Roach's synthesizers mix with flute, electric piano and sounds of nature flowing like breath, enveloping the listener in a sustained, delicate, translucent atmosphere.
Much of this music began as a series of early-’80s recordings commissioned by healing-arts programs and later used for everything from personal meditation to birthing music. Today these pieces still stand as a cornerstone in body-work, yoga, and healing therapies.

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.

Spirit Dome returns with a perfect companion, Live Archive. Living proof of the power of live performance, these recordings are so immediate and engaging it would be easy to assume they were crafted over months in the studio. Live Archive, from their 1997 tour, serves as a natural complement to 2004's Spirit Dome, recorded live to stereo master in one take in a studio-like environment. Live Archive was originally released as a small run on the Groove label in Holland, and has been out of print for several years.
Steve Roach / Vidna Obama's 2002 CD Innerzone served as the doorway to the surreal environment explored on Spirit Dome. Recorded in one continuous 74 minute session in a hotel room in Philadelphia, this is a dark sanctuary of pure texture and beautiful, if foreboding, dissonance pulled along with pulsing beats, subtle loops and dense soundworlds…

Since its release in 1988, Dreamtime Return has earned its reputation as a genuine classic. The two-CD magnum opus is one of the most important, widely known and highly respected release in Steve Roach’s vast body of work. It serves as an essential benchmark within the Electronic-Ethno-Atmospheric genre.
Roach’s travels in the Australian outback, along with studies of the Aboriginal Dreamtime, and his desert walkabouts in California were the lifeblood for this recording which even today sounds like a transmission from the near future and the very distant past.
Musically Dreamtime Return richly deserves its classic status, but Roach also deserves credit for leading electronic musicians out of their sheltered studios and into an active relationship with the landscape..

The evolution of Elegant Futurism… This is the next highly-anticipated chapter in the Body Electric / Light Fantastic story, except this time it's a new book altogether. This project has gone through several phases in its development over the past two years. Numerous pieces were created and set aside as the artists made new discoveries and continued pushed the envelope further than ever before. Roach and Vir Unis pulled out all the stops to create a music experience that flows with the natural precision of the body's life-blood, by way of a constant enfoldment of hyperstate fractal grooves and luminous soundworlds that are unique to their collaborative spirit.