Steve Roach -- the endlessly meditative thread

i recently learned that roach did a record with michael shrieve in 1988, the leaving time. it is on youtube and is just as fucking awesome as one might hope. transfer station blue vibes.

>regarding Mystic Chords, is it important for me to get the 3CD 'complete version' or am I fine with the still huge but less so editions? I have some emusic credits to burn.

I thought Mystic Chords was 4 CDs. At any rate, if you're at all interested, you're gonna want all of it eventually.

oh wait, haha... I have 17.00 emusic credits left this month and the mystic chords 4CD is 17.20 so maybe next month.

Mystic Chords is two 2-CD sets. The box set is literally just an outer box that holds both the sets. No extra tracks. I like discs 2 and 4 the best... Labyrinth and Piece of Infinity.

I wish he'd release a box set of the Immersion discs! Those are great if you favor the meditative/drone stuff. But I guess it would be, what... an 8-disc set?

I'd largely avoided Roach up until now - mainly because I think I'd misread him as gimmicky or new age* (in the pejorative sense). What with Ned's interview and various bits on here and the wide open space thread, I am happy to say I was horribly, gloriously wrong. I'm now frantically(so to speak) trying to navigate his discography trying to work out where to go next.

*this is within the bounds of fairness, right? See a man with a mullet holding a didgeridoo and I tend to wander the other way...

Well I am now on a Steve Roach kick.

Listening mostly to the earliest stuff, when he still sounds a lot like Tangerine Dream. And actually, I kind of like it better than TD -- shorter songs, not as much cheese. Actually, one of the best things I've heard is an epic track called "Harmonia Mundi" that was a bonus on the reissue of Empetus. 45-minutes of immaculate Berlin school patterns, and sounds like it could be the soundtrack for an entire season of Stranger Things by itself.

thanks! what other early years highlights have you got?

I would say Now, Traveler and Empetus are all strong Berlin school styled records, with scattered floaty ambient that you would expect from Roach. Traveler & Empetus (with the bonus track) are particularly strong

As Traveler was mentioned by Dominique there, worth noting that it's now available on Bandcamp as a name-your-price

https://steveroach.bandcamp.com/album/traveler

He also put up this one from 2001 as well

https://steveroach.bandcamp.com/album/core-legacy-edition

So what the hell is "e-music" supposed to have been? I've been reading AMG reviews, and it keeps being mentioned. Is it music along the lines of New Age but with electronics?

Also, this was just released as pay-what-you-want, and it sounds promising: https://steveroach.bandcamp.com/album/eclipse-mix.

I think it was an MP3-for-sale service?

tsk get outta here

I meant the "genre" that is alluded to in several reviews. Because of the mp3 service, I can't really google any other references to the genre. It's used in a lot of reviews on AMG by Jim Brenholts, e.g.,

"This CD is destined to be a classic. It will appeal to all e-music fans."

"There have been some dynamic collaborations in the e-music community."

"Stalker, by Robert Rich and B. Lustmord, is one of the darkest e-music CDs ever."

Also, I need to put a plug in for a Steve Roach album that isn't mentioned above: Spiral Revelation from 2016. Back to more Berlin-style synths sort of. Not nearly as frenetic as his earlier stuff in that vein. Much more akin to the recent albums by Steve Hauschildt, but naturally much more atmospheric than Hauschildt. Really good stuff!

I believe it's just an abbreviation of "electronic music", but favoured in the late 80s/90s by artists working in that field of spacey, ambient, Berlin-school, trad electronica (when "synth music" was a genre, rather than a description of most things). You'd hear it used all the time on the Jean Michel Jarre email discussion list I was on in the 90s, which probably puts it in context.

Thanks!

Playing three nights in a row in Tucson starting tonight, live stream via soma.fm, and he's about to start for tonight, so listen in

https://somafm.com/live/

Laying back quite a bit on the front half of this set. It's definitely a space track so far.

90 minutes inn...'oh yes, there are the drums'....

Dreamtime Return reissued:

https://steveroach.bandcamp.com/album/dreamtime-return-2018-high-resolution-remaster

There's an expanded version of Dreamtime Returns on the way apparently, with new tracks in the same style (as with the deluxe version of Structures From Silence a few years back). Plus a vinyl reissue too.

i recently found 2cd edition of 'quiet music' in a charity shop for £1.
that was a very good day.
had only heard the deep rich sonics of 'ritual ground'by steve roach and elmar schulte before.

I just discovered the album "Invisible", one of his long drone tracks. It stands out because it has some interesting percussion and textures that other works of his like this lack. Similar to that is the last track on "World's Edge". Both are worth checking out!

A fun bit of history

Steve Roach found the mock up of the Structures From Silence cover. This was the first cassette edition he self-released. Quickly it found its way to Stephen Hill @drSpace Hearts of Space @hearts_of_space and then to Ethan Edgecomb at Fortuna Records and the rest is history. pic.twitter.com/QKTIgfNKLR

— Projekt Records (@ProjektRecords) April 9, 2018

i put his new one on while i was writing something and there's almost too much going on for it to function as writing music lol

it's really great too i think https://steveroach.bandcamp.com/album/molecules-of-motion

i get very overwhelmed by his discography so i've just been going through chronologically lately. structures from silence is incredible, all the 80s stuff is imo

Skeleton Keys, one of his modular records, is available for free with name-your-price today for Halloween:

http://projektrecords.bandcamp.com/album/skeleton-keys-name-your-price?from=fanpub_nfnb_merch

reallly loving mercurius today https://steveroach.bandcamp.com/album/mercurius

So many good releases this year, and now this news!

https://steveroachexclusive.bandcamp.com/subscribe

So excited about this. Subscribed!

All three of these initial ones in the service are really quite good, even (or especially) for two of them being outtakes or early/alternate versions of later albums.

a timely revive. one of his tracks is on the Cherry Red box set Third Noise Principle, which I was listening to last week, looks like it's from the Traveler LP, and was one of the tracks that stood out to me so I was going to look into his other stuff. although I think I did initially confuse him with Steve Reich like the first response here

I kinda wonder what the electric bill is at the Timeroom, as it seems the soundworld never stops there? I kinda want to hope he has some type of scifi artisanal solar/geothermal setup getting the 'electricity' from the source Gaia. In this I picture Steve having rolling sequences going all the time in the timeroom and just wandering through while doing laundry, folding towels and every so often going over and twisting a knob or dropping a lever changing the gurgling mood.

Out of the dozens of releases on Spotify with "tacked to the wall of the coffeeshop" level naming/artwork, picked out "Etheric Imprints" to listen to and it is awesome.

Wisdom.

Anyone heard his latest, A Soul Ascends?

I have! It is of course lovely, though I'll need a second listen to lock into what makes it distinctive (which just about all his albums have as a matter of course -- there's always a particular angle or theme he concentrates on release for release).

Just listened to it now, it is indeed lovely. I'm perfectly fine with him plying his subliminal trade ad infinitum.

Yeah I posted "abundance mindset" in the Patricia Taxxon thread, and I meant it, and it applies here too - artificial scarcity is a tactic of capitalism.

His latest released yesterday via the subscription service, Immerse is way, way immersive even for him. (Wonderful of course.). I had some thoughts:

https://www.patreon.com/posts/covid-coping-1-39885119

His new one, Tomorrow, finds him in warm, glowing sequencer mode. It's really making my Friday morning
https://steveroach.bandcamp.com/album/tomorrow

slaying on livestream https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePCsPMjFVJo&feature=youtu.be

https://youtu.be/ePCsPMjFVJo

track he just played from the new album Tomorrow is sick, and the cover art for the new one is his first good cover art since Structures From Silence imo

Yeah it's a lovely album and I admit I did a double-take at the cover, just because I thought it might have been some lost 80s reissue. Who knew! Had to miss the livestream but he's going to be putting it on his Bandcamp soon so all good.

immediately bought tomorrow on the strength of the first track, wow

the livestreams are so, so good

he's just the best

"elegant futurism," indeed! I always have time for Steve Roach but he sounds reinvigorated here. Absolutely buying this one. I usually buy his albums on CD, which seems a better format for this music, but I'll admit to being tempted by the vinyl edition this time.

have to get up and flip the record is antithetical to my notion of listening to Steve Roach