Steve Roach

Steve Roach is one of the people who could run for the title of greatest new-age musician. Structures From Silence, Dreamtime Return and World's Edge, not to mention the records made in collaboration with Robert Rich, plus those recorded as part of Suspended Memories, are masterpieces leagues above the rest of what's out there (rock, jazz or whatever it may be).

Roach's work, as it progressively freed itself from the stereotypes of "space music" and instead approximated world-music, presented itself increasingly as a fundamental experience of our time. Along with Jon Hassell and a handful of others, Roach understood how to forge a new, pan-ethnic genre of "electronic chamber music" with psychoanalytical overtones, centered around the triad of "the ancient, the mystic and the subconscious", and whose language emerges from the dialectic between primitive ritualism and futuristic technology. From this genre, Roach created moments of truly high art, worthy of the greatest composers of the century. Roach is one of the greatest musicians of new-age music.

Steve Roach was born on the 16th of February 1955 in La Mesa, a suburb of San Diego sandwiched between desert and ocean, as the only-child of a working class family. Neglecting his schoolwork and in search of extreme sensations, the young Roach dedicated himself to Motocross. The death of two of his biker friends along with an accident which was his own near death experience convinced him to drastically change pursuit: in 1975 he embraced the philosophy of Yoga, a macrobiotic diet and the "kosmische musik" of Tangerine Dream.

Roach hurtled himself into the lead of this kind of music with the same energy and determination with which he had dared to risk his life in motocross. He used all of his assets to buy state of the art instruments, making ends meet with all sorts of jobs from work in an antenna factory to a record store clerk.

It was in 1978 in a record store (L.A.'s celebrated "Liquorice Pizza") that Roach held his first concert, which garnered him entry into the Los Angeles' community of electronic musicians from Cal Arts which included the likes of Harold Budd and Morton Subotnick. Thus, Roach became a protagonist of the wave of the first electronic concerts, together with Keven Braheny and Michael Stearns.

Two live concert recordings from 1985 and 1987 would see the light of day years later on Stormwarning (Soundquest, 1989). The two jams (the first of twenty one minutes, and the second of thirty one) are long cavalcades for sequencer, in a fun and exuberant style.

In 1978 Roach recorded his first cassette (never released), copies of which he sent to a few close associates. Just a few years later, Now (Fortuna, 1982), an album still under the aegis of Klaus Schulze (in for example the aquatic free-jazz of Comeback), Kraftwerk ( the robotic polyrhythms of Growth Sequence) and Tangerine Dream (the solemn ode Inquest).

The archival Emotions Revealed (2015) contains the 24-minute live performance Emotions Revealed (1983) and the 26-minute soundtrack for an art installation Firelight (1982). The former is relatively melodic and neoclassic, whereas the latter is his first wandering abstract soundpainting adventure.

The following year would see the release of Traveler (Domino, 1983), a collection of nine impressionist sketches.

For the most part, the sequencer presses on, hypnotic and pounding, as in the title track (which has a dramatic and imposing finale) and in TBC (which has a mechanical, quasi "industrial" cadence). Reflector on the other hand could be considered the first attempt to make greater use of the melodic qualities of electronics in creating a more serene and contemplative harmony.

The pinnacle of this period is Empetus (Fortuna, 1986), one of the masterpieces of cosmic music, was his first release to utilize a real recording studio and thus the opportunity to meditate on the music from behind the recording desk, composing it little by little and  to refine the material (the first two albums had been recorded practically live like the cassettes that preceded them).

The suite which gives the disc its title opens (with an overpowering sequencer rhythm) and closes (with a stunning apotheosis of all the synthesizers) in a tragic atmosphere. The impressionist sketches of the first albums have been overridden by a solid narrative structure, which aims to reflect the existential philosophy of the artist, perhaps best expressed in the third movement, in which a constant rhythm is sublimated by a siren song, which is simultaneously heroic and melancholy. Like almost all of the albums that followed, Empetus is first and foremost a "thesis" in which Roach explores a metaphysical theme. The second side of the record returns to the form of electronic poems, but with a greater awareness of the techniques of minimalism (Merge) and a more "industrial" spirit (Urge).

Meanwhile, Roach had started to compose and record two fundamental works: the Quiet Music trilogy, originally released in 1986 and later compiled on Quiet Music (Fortuna, 1988), and Structures From Silence (Fortuna, 1984), recorded from 1982 to 1984. With these works, the dramatic, synthesizer driven approach and the visceral energy of out of body experience was abandoned in favor of a deeper introspection and analysis of the interior life. The affinity for the ambient music of Brian Eno notwithstanding, Roach arrived at a language entirely his own, both futuristic and primitive, extrovert and introvert, awesome and austere.

The first "structure" Reflections In Suspension, does nothing more than continuously regenerate a system of harmonic references. For sixteen minutes, all there is to be heard is a series of puntilist (more so than minimalist) variations on two overlapped melodic figures, one twinkling and the other flowing. Quiet Friend is even more static: the synthesizers "swim" in slow motion in the immensity of space, and gradually fade into a haze of electronic reflections. This technique of melodic cartilage left to fluctuate and and reverberate over a long span of time culminates in the title track, which occupies the entire second side of the album. The contrast with the sequencer music of the previous records could not be greater.

The outer limit of Quiet Music is the slow, barely whispered development of Dreaming and Sleep, built around three fundamental sounds (a trill, a reverberation and a melody) which repetitively intersect and superimpose themselves together. A Few More Moments is even more spartan, although the slightly higher amplitude and the melodic thread give it a hallucinatory tone.

What takes place in the thirty two minutes of Air and Light the is perhaps the definitive maturation of the "cosmic" artist. Roach is at his best in the great outdoors, free from the limits of time, with only his electronic instrumentation to construct worlds of sound that reflect his mental state more faithfully the longer they have to focus, and which after a while seem to have a life of their own.

With Western Spaces (Innovative Communications, 1987) (Fortuna 1988) three electric gurus from Los Angeles made an album dedicated to the desert. This was Roach's first tribute to the environment which would characterize all of his works to come. Roach's two solo pieces Breathing Stone and In The Heat Of Venus, arid; anemic; stripped of flesh, are still marked by "quiet music".

In this period, Roach was also recording Leaving Time (RCA,1988) with Michael Shrieve in New York: there he would meet Jon Hassell, who would exercise a great influence over him.

Dreamtime Return (Fortuna, 1988) marks the culmination of Roach's phase of "losangelisiana". Here Roach brings forth an oneiric quality not present on the previous recordings. Without ever having been, Roach would become and remain so captivated by Australia on film, that he would attempt to link his own trance state with that of the aboriginals. The contribution of Robert Rich was fundamental; an attention to "organic" rhythms. These rhythms would definitively relegate the sequencer to the antiques cabinet, and open the doors to world music. Equally precious is the collaboration with David Hudson and Percy Trezi, longtime researchers of the primitive music of Australia.

Dreamtime Return is first and foremost a concept album; an electronic "concept" which has as its driving theme the magic rituals of primitive peoples. It is also, in its own way, a giant of electronics, less for its duration (over two hours) than for the deployment of instruments (from the computer to Hudson's didgeridoo, from Rich's percussion to Braheny's piano), styles (from synth pop to world music) and emotions (from the magical to the tragic, the ecstatic to the heroic).

The tracklist is ordered like a journey, which begins with the compelling sequencer of Towards The Dream and ends with the whirlpool of synthesizers in Return (both are metaphors: of man in search of the primal truth, and of man who has overcome a state of crisis to become a sage).

During this metaphysical journey, Roach enters mysterious places of space and mind, which are rendered through oneiric suspense punctuated by primitive rhythms and electronic effects (Airtribe Meets The Dream Ghost), to immerse himself in pagan ceremonies, rendered by subliminal sounds and intermittent choirs (A Circular Ceremony), and reach the "other side" of this world - an internal world. Here Roach indulges in a more metaphysical ecstasy, with languid Kitaro-esque melodies (The Other Side) and fluctuations of cosmic hiss (Magnificent Gallery).

Penetrating ever deeper into this archaic and arcane dimension, Roach reaches a music of a kind of classical austerity, almost a sonata for piano and electronics with the inherent qualities of ambient music (Truth In Passing).

This is a journey that begins on Earth, through natural landscapes and then moves into the world of experience, the subconscious, memory and hidden meanders of the mind.

The album's strongest piece is the unending psychodrama of Looking For Safety, over half an hour of ebbing melodic figures, very slowly evolving over a dark rumble in the background in which a sense of impending tragedy slowly dissolves into a sorrowful cosmic mantra. Here a liturgy of the subconscious takes form, which reclaims the most authentic dimension of the human soul, the one that only emerges through contact with ancient civilisations, and which, for this very reason, could not be more universal.

Taking a cue from Jon Hassell's anthropo-musical agenda of exploring the collective subconscious that transcends the specificity of culture, Roach, in a shaman-like exhumation, retrieves an ancient, primordial voice through electronic technology.

From a more tragic climate, signaled by the electronic dissonances of Through A Strong Eye) (the eye through which the aboriginal shaman can read the future), Roach reaches the rhythmic crescendo of The Ancient Day, and finally Red Twilight With The Old Ones, in which a foundation of rather skeletal electronics is juxtaposed with alien sounds and ritual chants. The suffocated sobs of his synthesizer caress the fragile shimmers of the percussion in arcane emotional excursus.

It is perhaps the most personal album of his career; neither filtered through an alien culture like those of his Australian period, nor influenced by a Western genre like those of the cosmic period. The result is a tragic work: full of the spirit of a metaphysical warrior, who must face his fears and overcome them to assert himself; full of the sense of danger that dominates all of Roach's life.

With Dreamtime Return, Roach realized his life's dream: to be able to communicate at the fundamental level of the collective subconscious in a time and space that transcends specific culture.

This monumental work (more than two hours of music) would influence the later works, in all of which Roach strives for a suggestive synthesis of the modern and the primordial. Fascinated by the rituals of the indigenous peoples of Australia, of the desolate immense desert landscapes, of the life-cycles of nature, Roach attempts to render them musically using an electronic clay, rich in ethereal and surreal effects (it's almost impossible recognise the instrument which gives rise to any given sound), each calculated to evoke a scene or mood, to provoke a feeling of hypnosis and identification in the listener. His is, like Hassell's, another arduous exercise in abstracting both the sounds of the Third World and the subconscious of the Western traveler. With him, the electronic symphony becomes popular folklore.

Desert Solitaire (Fortuna, 1989), composed with Kevin Braheny and Michael Stearns, is inspired by the book of the same name by Edward Abbey, and is an ode to the desert. Roach's pieces, like Specter (with another suggestive contribution from Robert Rich on percussion) and most of all the concerto of buzzes which is High Noon are electronic hallucinations with no beginning or end, which indulge in a quasi-horror sensationalism. With this album, Roach finds himself a more expressive, more contemplative vein.

Strata (Hearts Of Space, 1990) is a collection of tonal poems from a "fourth world" (to use Jon Hassell's term) populated with sounds that are simultaneously unintelligible and universal. The album is in fact a continuation of the work on "organic" rhythms that began with Dreamtime Return and completes the assimilation with Aboriginal musical culture. Robert Rich's rhythms give Roach's "quiet music" a more corporeal and ultimately human quality, allowing Roach's pieces to find themselves in a more documentary rather than metaphysical space.

There's something of Rich's suspense in the overture Fearless. This track, although tempered by the heavenly tinkling of Forever. Is the supporting structure of the grand impressionist murals of Grotto Of Time Lost, iguana and Magma in which an image is diffracted into a stain, into vapour, into a dream. A measured and suggestive use of sound effects makes the music more dramatic without the loss of consonance ever being even the least bit hostile.

This psycho-environmental are culminates in songs dedicated to objects devoid of natural sound, like Persistence Of Memory, Ceremony Of Shadows and La Luna. These "songs" are in fact composed of lugubrious sounds, deformed echoes and morose evanescences.

A second visit to Australia is the bases of Australia: Sound Of The Earth (Fortuna, 1991), the most profound testimony of his relationship with the aboriginal civilisation.

The new journey into the collective subconscious begins with Red Dust And Sweat, a long piece composed of dark vibrations straddle the line between subliminal and cosmic, pierced occasionally by primitive tribalisms, animal sounds, natural noise; and which continues thrugh the oneiric impasto of Atmospheres For Dreaming, in which formless vortexes of electronics are crossed with birdsong and disturbing waves of sound; to then sink into the storm of Darktime/Initiation, the darkest and most aggressive movement, supported by a pounding pulse of woodwind and with a whole carnival of sound effects that allude to occult ritualism.

As with the earlier masterpieces, the register that Roach chooses is a tragic one, but at the same time void of dramatic development, as if Hamlet were reduced to an appearance on stage by an actor who emits a visceral groan and turns to face the audience with a terrified look. Roach makes the most of his electronic resources, while Hudson tunes his didgeridoo to the most mysterious sounds, and Sarah Hopkins (Australian avantguard composer) alternates between cello, bells and "spirit catcher: a traditional instrument that is whirled in the air.

Hopkins contributes to Awakening the Earth, fourteen minutes of pure madness on electronics and cello. The album is completed by Hudson's compositions for didgeridoo which are faithful echoes of the music of the aboriginals (like the rousing Call To Kuranda).

Having retired to living in the living in the Arizona desert, a few minutes from Tucson, Roach remains subjugated by that lunar landscape of cacti and sand, by the great vacant expanses, by the sounds of coyotes and vultures and by the suffocating heat.

The double album World's Edge (Fortuna, 1992) truly reflects this existential swerve, capturing the essence of living in the desert and of needing to reinvent oneself.

The title track is the final thing recorded in Los Angeles, and immediately presents the albums most significant novelty: the rhythms. Roach assimilates the conventional rhythms of consumer music into his gloomy habitats of electronic sounds, which, coupled with the long melodic phrases of the german school, define an atmosphere of astral calm. However the title track resonates both with excruciating dissonances which express the lacerations of the subconscious, and with thunder and lightning. Roach's favorite theme, that of running headlong towards the "edge" without fear of what could be hiding on the "other side" is explored here in an almost maniacal manner.

The concept of World's Edge is the experience of living in a state of crisis, evolution and renewal. The metaphor that roach chooses is that of one who falls into an abyss, but before crashing to the ground, manages to build wings and take flight.

The most obsessive compositions are based on that psychic trauma, like Undershadow and Beat of Desire, apotheosis of an entirely internal horror/eros which often reaches a near symphonic intensity; while abstract poems of a weaker but no less distressing dissonances like When Souls Roam, resume the evocative journey into the darkest recesses of the collective subconscious that Roach has been taking for some ten years by this point.

Even more dreamlike and relaxed atmospheres cradle Drift and Falling Flying Dreaming, as if while contemplating the marvels of the desert the artists had fallen into a state of trance. Strengthened by a more ordered harmony, Thunderground is the most moving homage to this land at the "edge". The whole of the first disc is supported by strong and virile arrangements, which bring the pathos to unnerving levels.

Taking advantage of his newly acquired good faith, Roach then indulges in a full hour of electronic improvisation, To The Threshold Of Silence. And it is an hour full of stereotypes of the genre: from gong strikes to intergalactic hisses, from Gregorian choirs to mantra hums, passing through countless transcendental stases and melodious fluctuations. Languid to the point of fainting (see the black hole at the end into which the entire magma of sound disappears), and diluted to the point of canceling out any dramatic or cinematic quality, To The Threshold Of Silence sublimates a twenty-five-year long tradition that begins with Pink Floyd's Saucerful Of Secrets and Klaus Schulze's Irrlicht.

Following that titanic undertaking, Roach once again collaborated with Robert Rich, but the result this time, Soma (Hearts of Space, 1992) is very different from Strata: by this point the two composers have abandoned the legacy of electronic suites and are experimenting on the more subtle aspects of sound and rhythm. Indeed each song is first and foremost its own rhythm; a rhythm always full of primordial significance and psychoanalytic qualities. Over these rhythms, Roach spreads his magical atmospheres "to the threshold of silence), immersed in layers upon layers of mystery.

Side one is a digression into these possible formsof silence, with peaks of bewilderment in Nightshade and even more so in Silk Ridge, and a grand finale in the "danse macabre" of the title track. The collaborative ritual of Blood Music is inspired by the form, dynamic and substance of blood.

Origins (Hearts Of Space, 1993) is a solo work in which Roach renounces the suggestive power of rhythm (except on The Face In The Fire) and instead lingers in the hypnotic sounds of the didgeridoo. Roach's imagination finds its outlet in two practically perpendicular formats: a deft technique of scattering mysterious sounds to evoke animal, human and supernatural presences (Connected Underground and In The Eyes Of The Spirit); and a tenebrous impasto of murmurs and pulses, a primordial magma from which, little by little, voices and forms emerge (Artifacts). From the fusion of these two styles comes the surrealist short-film-like Dreaming Now Then.

The second format rationalizes one of the core practices which underpins many of his works: the presence of the human being causes a sonic "warp" in the world, anagogous to the space-time distortion caused in general relativity by mass. By exploring this sonic warp, the musician probes yhe most secrety properties of thehuman condition

To profit from the tributes paid to him from every corner of the musical spectrum (rock, jazz, classical and new age), Roach put out a collection of Lost Pieces (Rubicon, 1993), composed between 1988 and 1922. Much simpler in spirit and arrangement, these pieces place us in different strands: melodic electronica (Since We Are Away), the world-music of Hasssell (Full Moon Prophecy), the ambiental poetry of Cluster (Closer). The only composition which has the complexity of the contemporaneous works is Three Reptiles Wait At The Opening Of the Underworld, the surrealist nightmare spell.

Roach then launched the Suspended Memories project, recruiting the Mexican flautist Jorge Reyes and the Spanish guitarist Suso Saiz, a sort of new age supergroup. Forgotten Gods (Hearts Of Space, 1993) is their first album.

The most suggestive element of the album lies in the juxtaposition of the two supernatural timbres of Reyes and Saiz (which always ultimately refer to some state of trance) with the timeless electronics of Roach. With Reyes' clay flute in the place of Hassell's trumpet and Saiz's guitar "ohms" in the place of electronic "drones", the trio created a new standard of authorial world-music, which is sublimated when the flutes of Reyes create a superhuman vortex in Mutual Tribes or when Saiz's guitar intones the reverbs of Night Devotion. Snake Song seems to want to add vocals to the mix, with a chant-like register that descends from the folklore of the Red Indians.

The most forgrounded element, however, is the rhythm. Progressing in his process of almost maniacal impersonation of Aboriginal civilisation, Roach arrives at an increasingly aggressive, increasingly tribal musical form, of which the feverish delirium of Different Deserts represents the manifesto.

Roach is now a master in musically and emotionally rendering all the suspense that reigns in the natural world. He does this through a conspicuous and widespread use of small chamber noises, small dissonances that follow one another discreetly, like the clicking of percussion. The score of his hallucinations thus includes the sounds of the desert which agitate the whole of Different Deserts and, at the end, ultimately take over at the end; also the sinister noises in the dark of Saguaro (which simulate coyotes, vultures, snakes and insects) and the metaphysical ones of the title track (in which the long majestic "drones" of the keyboards seem to indicate the otherworldly presence), ending in Shaman's Dream, hinted at through a riot of percussion and dissonance.

The desert is perhaps the true protagonist of this music, imbued with magical-astral atmospheres, sinister pauses, prehistoric cadences, organic harmonies, moulded by the forms of cacti and snakes.

Earth Island is made of hallucinations of the sun, through which we pass into a parallel universe of echoes and natural noises. Jon Hassell's futurist and primitivist world-music prevails in Melting World, a catalog of subconscious sounds mixed in an icy wind of electronic hiss.

The dark and torpid movements of First Man and Places Inbetween insinuate visions of other times and other places, with Roach still discovering new ways of world-music, in an increasingly ambitious attempt to coin a music of the supernatural. Every single sound in these songs has its own psychological (but perhaps also anthropological, archaeological and epistemological) role.

Earth Island (Hearts Of Space, 1994) is the second album by Suspended Memories. The novelty of this work, from Curandera to First Blessing is in fact the vocals, which by this point are on par with the other instruments, and which are also deformed in their own archaic way.

Roach also collaborated with Elmar Schulte on Ritual Ground (Silent, 1994 - Projekt, 2000).

In this period, Roach was more prolific than ever before. Already, Artifacts (Fortuna, 1994) was ready for release. This album marks a peremptory return to the world of tribal rhythm (Groundswell), alongside the usual exasperations of the didgeridoo's timbre (Thunder Brother), but also a certain creative lethargy. Several songs recycle ideas from World's Edge without any substantial new features. Roach does not delve into the deepest intuitions of recent times; that subtle way of choreographing his metaphysical walks in the desert with sound. The strongest piece of the album is in fact the title track, in which for twenty five minutes Roach unleashes his arsenal of noises, but instead of relegating them discreetly to the background, he launches them into the foreground at full volume. The effect is disorienting, as if cosmic music had finally reached the inside of a black hole and was being bombarded with alien material at insane speed.

With the seventy-three minutes of Dream Circle (Soundquest, 1994) Roach delivers another memorable blow to musical conventions, as he did on To The Threshold Of Silence. In this cathartic pool on the border between cosmic music (descriptive, cinematic and strongly chromatic style) and ambient music (melodic figures in very slow evolution, stasis, infinite drifts, iridescent timbres) Roach shows off his skills as a director of sound-documentaries that have no dramatic development. The music transmits calm sensations of contact with nature, of resonance with the fundamental frequencies of animals and natural phenomena, of mental symbiosis with the beginning of time, of resigned consternation in the presence of the ephemeral human adventure in the grandiose context of the universe. Roach realizes Brian Eno's dream (music that shouldn't be listened to, but which is pure muzak in the background) but imbues it with a subliminal power.

However, it is another afterthought on the road of world music. In the depths of his soul Roach remains above all a "cosmic courier". The primordial rhythms, the didgeridoo, the psychological noises have only scratched the surface of what remains his most authentic vocation: the exploration of space, both internal and external.

1995 saw the release of two prominent collaborations: the monumental Well Of Souls (Projekt, 1995), with belgian artist Vidna Obmana, and Kiva (Hearts Of Space, 1995) with Michael Stearrns and Ron Sunsinger, inspired by ancient ceremonies of the indigenous americans.

The first of the two is a festival of subliminal "drones". From the sweet trance of In the Presence Of Something to the mix of equatorial tribalism and cosmic music of In The Realm Of Twilight. The Secret Arrival delineates how to create an atmosphere of mystery from a milieu of sounds with no relation to one another, void of thematic development, leveraging atavistic icons of sound.

The long and enveloping suite The Gathering pays homage to Jon Hassell's futurist-primitivism : every sound is calibrated by the millimeter to reawaken primordial instincts from an age-old torpor. The failure of these pieces is a certain staticity, the lack of development. The narrative of Deep Hours is banal: a din of intergalactic dissonance creates a tragic depth that takesthat takes twenty minutes to dissolve into a flock of very long drones. In a minor key, instead, is Well Of Souls, a concert for spirits and nebulae which again lasts over twenty minutes.

Overall, the songs on this album seem like notes and memos left in Steve Roach's drawer, taken up and adapted to "ambient" fashion by his talented partner.

The four suites of Kiva are interspersed with samples of native american ceremonial songs. The true protagonist of the four "kivas" is the indigenous Ron Sunsinger, who infuses them with the authentic spirit of his tribes. Only in West Kiva can we recognize the hand of the electronic master, when a crazy tribalism is slowly filtered and refined until leaving only cosmic waste and debris. Roach continues to oscillate between a metaphorical labyrinth and an anthropological essay.

Meanwhile, the friendships forged with Stephen Kent and Kenneth Newby of Trance Mission materialize in the album Halcyon Days (Hearts Of Space, 1996). It may seem banal, but the sound is a precise fusion between the desert climates of Roach's music and the primitivist futurism of Trance Mission. The subtle electronic noises of the first are combined with the ritualistic cadences of Kent and the dark fantasies of Newby.

The promises are kept in the imposing frescoes of Halcyon Days (a long tribal dance that slowly rises into a delirium of synthesizers, didgeridoos and percussion. The nightmarish visions of First Day are cato disturbing jungle noises (flute blowings, croaking of didgeridoo, rattles, electronic hisses) on a magmatic swamp rhythm. The solemn and light percussive sounds, over which the buzzes of the didgeridoo cycle and the calm prayers of the flute extend, give Rainfrog Dreaming an almost Zen atmosphere.

The music plunges into a hallucinogenic nightmare with the echoes and dizziness of Slow Walk At Stone Wash, the most psychological piece in the collection; all internal suspense and subliminal drones, with the rhythm disappearing and giving way to a flock of electronic meteorites and didgeridoo. From there to the astral silences of Calyx Revelation it is a short step: the dissonances of electronics are left to float in large harmonious spaces, far from any ethnic perdition. The short desert watercolors Snake Brothers and Riding The Atlas, with their lively cadence and rich polyphony, break the tension of the major pieces and Kingfisher Flight seals the journey with triumphant symphonism.

Beautifully engineered and executed, this album marks Roach's return to the heights of his art.

The Dreamer Descends (Amplexus, 1996) contains two compositions for a total of twenty minutes. Sense of fear, anguish, mystery.

The second chapter of his collaboration with Belgian talent Dirk Serries (Vidna Obmana), after Well Of Souls, of their collaboration was Cavern Of Sirens (Projekt, 1997). This album displays the same virtues and the same vices of the first one: an impeccable manipulation of timbres countered by a lack of interesting plots. A rule of thumb in music is "the longer the piece, the more ambitious it must be". Tracks such as Middle World Passage (24 minutes) do not satisfy that rule. The warped kaleidoscope of melodic textures, the simering percussive patterns, the suspence that hides behind each note, are the quintessence of Roach's style: what is missing is his soul.

The Magnificent Void (Hearts Of Space, 1996), a concept album dedicated to the void, and marks the definitive turning point in Roach's conversion to ambient music. The wanderer of the "fourth" world sets sail for a fifth, that of pure sonic abstraction. Just as Beatrice became Dante's guide through the metaphysical heavens when Virgil could guide him no further through the terrestrial world, here Roach's (ideal) traveling companion is no longer Jon Hassell, who is replaced by the more pictorial Klaus Schulze. The journey begins with Between The Gray And The Purple, in which drones wail in slow motion to make the sense of nothingness feel "domestic", intimate, close. Infinite Shore is a symphonic movement set instead on darker timbres which progress to an imposing and melodramatic register: melodic fragments are left floating like the sighs of ghosts. If the tender and melancholic stasis of Cloud Of Unknowing borders on ambient music, The Magnificent Void opens with sinister percussion noises and continues amidst increasingly disturbing rumbles: it is one of the darkest and least musical pieces of Roach's career.

The tour de force of Altus (twenty minutes) adds nothing that the other songs had not already said, but resumes the "total", "absolute" style of World's Edge, that loss of sanity within the universal delirium, and playing at being bigger than the entire universe. The harmonic blocks of Altus, solemn and glacial, simply go "beyond", and enter increasingly terrible territories among indecipherable mysteries. Roach is the greatest electronic storyteller ever, the modern equivalent of the bards of the past: instead of recounting the epic exploits of some hero of the past, he recounts stories more "panic" than epic, of himself in search of the  secrets of our universe.

The sensationalism of these songs is "recounted" by Roach at the peak of his musical means. Each piece is a painstaking assembly of minute "gestures", each of which however has a prodigious strength. The timbre of the electronics is more than crystalline, it is almost pure emotion. The hand of the composer is recognized in the multitude of details that are hidden within the apparent simplicity of the structure. The limit of the album is instead its mannerism: Roach, this intrepid cosmic traveller, could continue to play on practically forever.

This is the album that brought him respect even among jazz music critics.

On This Planet (Fathom, 1997) comes from his program of live performances. By his standards, these are relatively concise compositions (the longest not reaching a quarter of an hour) and are notably abstract: that is to say, far from his typical ethnic influences. In the ambient era Roach is perhaps trying to gain recognition for the pioneering role he actually played, but at the expense of what is a clear artistic regression. These pieces have an appeal that is purely technological: the composer's effort lies in finding increasingly persuasive and evocative sounds, in magically rolling them up into drones and loops and whatnot, in mixing them with a sweet (and a little lysergic) grace, in smoothing out the polyphony of any harshness or angularity, in serving it at the table with graceful and solemn elegance. The result is a more subtle and psychological work than the electro-acoustic studies of the past, but also a harmony reduced to obvious gestures (for him). Roach has a method of looping a frenetic and light percussiveness that you listen to over and over again ad nauseam in Journey Of One and Ecstasy Of Travel. Songs like Nexus Place and A Darker Star have no plot or message, they are simply collages of Steve Roach stereotypes. Eventually the music becomes unnerving, cloying and self-indulgent.

The best moments could be part of a soundtrack for a planetarium: the menacing cloud of Void Memory, from which swirls of drones and dissonances peep out, the natural sounds and electronics drifting in remote orbits of Heart Of The Tempest, and the long tones and the tribalism of the title track.

In an unlikely partnership, Roach befriended a folk guitarist and composed Dust To Dust (Projekt, 1988) a record of music rooted in American tradition that couldn't be further from his electronic style. Gone West is desert country for guitar and harmonica, something dreamlike that recalls Neil Young on the soundtrack of Dead Man. A Daze Wage drifts on the border between Leo Kottke's watercolors and minimalism: a sharp riff presses on a substrate of percussive noises and a background of languid electronics. A Bigger Sky is a solemn hymn for wild-eyed redskins, Snake Eyes is ceremonial music for underground tribes, Rain And Creosote is a romantic and desolate ballad.

The dark gregarious King fuses the sensitivity of the blues with Roach's metaphysical inspiration in an exemplary and almost miraculous way.

Roach's Michelangelesque technique takes over only in The Ribbon Rails Of Promise, eleven minutes of frenetic rhythm and mystical fluctuations (like A Rainbow In Curved Air era Riley accompanied by a harmonica) and Lost And Forgotten, music for pauses and silences mindful of his "Australian" season. Closing the work is Ghost Train, the most difficult piece: a disordered accumulation of chords and discords, which betrays an ideal link with genesis, which is again rarefied and made hallucinogenic under the influence of country music.

Indefinable and probably unrepeatable, this album has the charm of music that comes from the heart. Roach (resident of the Arizona desert) has finally opened his soul to his natural environment and, for the first time since writing music, has become part of his own ecosystem.

The Ambient Expanse (Mirage, 1998) is a five-way split with Patrick O'Hearn, Vidna Obmana, Stephen Bacchus and Vir Unis. Roach contributes Eternal Expanse, an eighteen-minute composition that harks back to the cosmic music of his early years, to galactic waves, menacing drones, technicolor trills, the metaphysics of the infinite and the unknown. Set to the most colorful timbres of his electronic keyboards, this humble coda to a compilation is one of his most successful suites.

The triple-disc Ascension Of Shadow (Projekt, 1999) was his third collaboration with Vidna Obmana.

Body Electric (Projekt, 1999) continues the collaboration with Vir Unis, and sees the promotion of the latter to co-author of the album. The record, even if only for the use of rhythm machines, is much lighter than the previous ones: Born Of Fire is a cross between the percussive experiments of Ummagumma, disco world music and the most fluffy; Pure Expansion would like to emulate the spiritual fire of primitive rituals, but the polyrhythms are coldly artificial; Cave of The Heart fiddles with electronics over an apathetic rhythm. What redeems the album are more humble songs such as Gene Pool, Homunculus Within and Solar Tribe, in which only the sounds of the jungle, the swamp, the savannah can be heard. The album certainly represents a turning point in Roach's career. The musician had never been so aggressive.

Vir Unis is also the co-star of Light Fantastic (Hearts of Space, 1999), although the album is credited only to Roach. The frenetic and syncopated rhythms of these collaborations always leave a bad taste in the mouth. The idea is that rhythms and melodies exchange roles: the rhythms act as the melody and Roach's ambient tones beat the tempo. In reality, songs like Trip The Light simply seem like an attempt to speculate on the drum'n'bass trend. For the rest, one can choose between the tired and lazy composer of The Reflecting Chamber or the self-indulgent one of Touch The Pearl (effectively a long loop of a basic pattern) or the one who uses stereotypes of Steve Roach's music to compose the "light music" of Realm Of Refraction. The Luminous Return feels like a departure from Magnificent Void. Compared to the previous album, even the appeal of primitive ceremony is missing.

Steve Roach's prodigious output displayed a consistent average quality, although he has rarely matched the level of inspiration of his landmark recording Dreamtime Return.

Steve Roach's already prolific career further accelerated with the founding of his own Timeroom label.

Slow Heat (Timeroom, 1999), a 71 minute composition, appears to be the most ambitious work. The long-dreaming-suite structure recalls Dream Circle (Soundquest, 1994), and his "cosmic" recordings in general. Roach's has often veered towards world-music for the sake of experimenting with new timbres and new rhythms, but at the bottom he has remained the same philosopher he was at the beginning. Prove is that, when he lets his electronic keyboards roam the universe, he produces the most conceptual and original works. Slow Heat is very much a soundtrack of his favorite environment, the Arizona desert, but also a natural bridge between that arid, hostile, inorganic landscape and the crowded horizons of the skies. The suite begins with sounds of nature and soon develops into a psalm or mantra to the nebulae and the cosmic winds. We are sitting in the desert and, as we start contemplating the galaxies, we are slowly drawn away from the surroundings and led to a fantastic voyage. Then time takes over space: instead of traveling to distant places, we travel to distant times. Drones dissolve into ghostly noises and echoes, as if we entered an ancient grotto. The music, less grandiose and ever thinner, loses its descriptive quality and acquires a psychologic quality. We are searching our souls, not the universe, for life. The music comes to a standstill, to silence, to the sounds of nature. We are back in the desert. Then the cycle resumes and we are flying one more time in stratosphere. We land, one last time, amongst sounds of water and smoke. The desert has turned into the primeval eden.

Atmospheric Conditions (Timeroom, 1999) groups three ambient/trance compositions that are not quite thematically related.
Underground Clouds Over a Secret Grotto is truly impressionistic music: the piece, thanks to a sophisticated by understated array of slowly dissolving loops and deeply resonating echoes, is virtually a painting of a grotto and clouds, the way a late Monet would have done it, sketchy and lyrical. Only towards the end, the descriptive, cinematic soul of Roach prevails and leads us through a more literal tour of the grotto's magical habitat. It wouldn't be surprising if Roach, given his mastery of tones, became the Debussy of cosmic music.
In The Heart of Distant Horizons is a very subdued piece of slowly evolving drones. While the effect recalls dreaming, there is almost no action: images drown in the metaphisical semiosphere.
One perceives a new mood in Roach's music: the youthful exuberance and exploration (that lasted well beyond his chronological youth) are rapidly fading into a form of inward-looking wisdom. The dramatic symphonic poems that crowned his career (and sometimes led to repetitions) are being replaced by slow-motion sonatas that express deeply felt emotions. The center of his music has shifted from the anthropological to the philosophical.

The collection of rarities Truth & Beauty: Lost Pieces vol 2 (Timeroom, 1999) is a "must" only for the completist. It does contain a few gems, notably Aftermath (1992) and one tracks with Suso Saiz that did not find space on Forgotten Gods (Hearts Of Space, 1993): Earthman, but overall it is truly meant to fill a void in the critic's discography. These pieces are made a little insignificant by so much important music that Roach has produced since they were recorded.

Vine - Bark & Spore (Timeroom, 2000) documents a collaboration with electronic buddy Jorge Reyes. The exotic vignette Sorcerer's Temple warms up the duo for the supernatural vortex of The Holy Dirt. The dense texture of percussions and keyboards manages to be uplifting instead of threatening while the hypnotic repetition acquires a tribal quality. The exorcism leads the duo to the vast, peaceful ocean of Night Journey, floating with drones of didjeridoo over the jungle, a music not of sounds but of shadows of sounds, and not multidimensional but monodimensional; in a word, a music of silhouettes. Compared with those psychological nightmares, Spore And Bark is a pastoral symphony, its thick carpet of natural sounds and its otherworldly voices pointing to some inner understanding of the human and the earthly. The album is also helped by a somewhat psychedelic feeling. All tracks are played like in a stupor, in a trance, in a loss of reference frame.
There are two Steve Roach. One is the cosmic courier, the protagonist, the wild and heroic electronic soloist who rides on tumultous melodies towards the unknown. The other Steve Roach is merely supporting cast: he can fill the stage with fantastic elegance and nonchalance, but what he does is "background". Over the last three years (after Magnificent Void ), Roach has rarely been the protagonist and sometimes a mere "background" (no matter how wonderful) and a mere background for music without a protagonist. In this collaboration Roach is not the protagonist, he is only the background, but Reyes' fascination with primitive and magic cultures fills the part. In a sense, the closing track, Gone From Here, doesn't seem to belong here, because it is a (20-minute) cosmic symphony of epic proportions, where sound is used in a visual manner reminiscent of early Klaus Schulze, and with a prominent organ aria that recalls Constance Demby's Novus Magnificat. Melodic lines drift and orbit in galactic spaces. Michelangelo's hand can be recognized in how a sculpture evokes mortality: Roach's hand can be recognized in how the music evokes eternity.

Midnight Moon (Projekt, 2000) marks the first time that Roach played the guitar, and actually built the entire album around it. But make no mistake: the guitar is hardly recognizable. Its sound has been metabolized by Roach's electronic periphrases. Furthermore, the guitar is only a device. The soul of the album is the soul of the artist, that was caught at time of minimal activity, late at night or early in the morning. That moment fostered psychological introspection, rather than cosmic wandering, and the result is as dark and unsettling as it could be. Roach the psychologist has analyzed Roach the patient and the findings are not pretty. The static tones of Ancestor Circles evoke a deadly chillingness. A multitude of spectral voices rises in Deadwood. Broken Town reverberates like a chamber orchestra playing acid-rock. Later Phase is 12 minutes of pure cinematic suspense: sonic blocks move but we only perceive the shadows, we are encircled and we can't escape, and we can't see who is cornering us. Nature's deepest secrets engage the mind's most obscure recesses in a dreadful dialogue.
The somnambulant 22-minute suite Midnight Loom weaves cascading guitar strums around the softest electronic background Roach has ever conceived, the musical equivalent of slow-motion breathing, almost a tribute to zen meditation. This is not music of hypnosis, it is music of hibernation.
Very few Roach recordings show so little dramatic development. This is almost an alter-Roach, a musician who shuns grand gestures in favor of humble self-examination. Stubbornly personal even when he disavows himself.

Prayers To The Protector (Celestial Harmonies, 2000) is a collaboration with Buddhist monk Thupten Pema Lama. A more appropriate title would be "mass", because the album contains five prayers and one instrumental. Roach's accompaniment is too obvious. Roach gets drawn into the mystical atmosphere created by the monk's chanting but, alas, forgets to add his own mythological vision of the world. A mere soundtrack to some religious event is not as exciting as incorporating that event's soul into the artist's soul.

Early Man (Projekt, 2000) is a very ambitious work (and a very lengthy one at about 140 minutes), and, in many ways, it constitutes the culmination of Roach's ethno-ambient research, its evolution into a new genre of musical anthropology. The two discs are complementary. Disc one is a musical documentary: it follows a day in the life of an early man through six different natural environments (Early Dawn, the 25-minute colossus Early Man, Begins Looking Skyward, Walking Upright, Hunting & Gathering, Flow Stone). Roach's electronic chemistry can indulge in manufacturing cryptic, slow-moving and magic soundscapes. The rhythm and the electronics follow the primordial human through his dreams, fears and rituals. The tracks on disc one have a fairy-tale quality, whereas disk two is a far more subliminal affair.
The second set of tracks, which technically are produced by a process of decomposition and recomposition of disc one (i.e., they are remixes), hint at the early man's states of mind, at their inner life. Trance is the medium to communicate back in time million of years. Here, Roach's soundsculpting is both subtle and visionary.

Pure Flow (2001) is a compilation of some of his most soothing and relaxing compositions: In The Heart Of Distance Horizons from Atmospheric Conditions, Slow Heat from Slow Heat, Gone From Here from Vine - Bark & Spore, The Dream Circle from The Dream Circle, This And The Other and The Unbroken Promise from Truth and Beauty, etc.

Roach gives everything he has gotten in terms of atmospherics for the double-CD The Serpent's Lair (Projekt, 2001), a collaboration with percussionist Byron Metcalf (also featuring Dirk Serries, Jorge Reyes, Vir Unis). Technically, the key ingredient of all tracks is the studio manipulation of "shamanic" percussions (shakers, clay pots, toms, etc). This is the main feature and the main limit of the entire work (if you don't like the sound of "shamanic percussions", you won't like anything here). But the album is, above all, a tribute to his life's main obsession: shamanism. Throughout his career and his travels, Roach has merely been repeating the same shamanic act. The opening track, The Lair, is a metaphor for Roach's artistic persona and the archetype for the rest of the album: ghostly symphonic drones (the superhuman, cosmic, desire) lull a tribal beat (the ancestral. ritual, earthly element). Since the early years, Roach's art has arisen from the merging of these two elements.
The same pattern is exhibited in Rite Of Passage (filtered strains of voice and didjeridoo enhance the driving tom-toms).
The music tends to be a little too diluted. Very little happens in these sprawling tracks. Where Roach's epic soundtracks used to pack emotions to the limit, these slowly rotating mirages have totally been emptied of feelings. The liquid and relaxed shuffle of Big Medicine would even appeal to chill rooms.
Sometimes, the guests determine the sound. Jorge Reyes adds an arsenal of odd flute sounds to Birthright and Osmosis. Jim Cole colors Serpent Clan and Beating Heart Of The Dragon Mother with his mantra droning. While intriguing, these collaborations do not sound completely in sync with the rest of the album.
Mostly, the music is like whispered, barely audible. Roach employs the weakest tones and toys with the most fragile harmonics. Egg Chamber Dreaming, an abstract sound sculpture that slowly coalesces in a tidal drone, is a solo Roach, and dwarfs anything else that preceded it. Things get truly eerie on the second disc, when the subsonic, subaquatic, subliminal variations of Offering In Waves, the unfocused echoes and fluctuations of Impending Sense of Calm, the dilated thunder of Primal Passage (all solo Roach compositions) force a new pace that basically dispenses with rhythm. The composer seems to test his audience's ability to "listen" (as in the "deep listening" experiences of Pauline Oliveros). The mostly vocal invocation of Ochua (with the instruments barely alive, resembling distant breezes in slow motion rather than orchestrated sounds) enhance the feeling of languid, anemic, stoned. These tracks may mark a transition in Roach's career from ambient/cosmic trance to deeply interior and abstract music.
The 23-minute Cave Dwellers achieves the ultimate synthesis of voices, electronics and processed percussions, a cloud of psychedelic chanting, muted beats and amorphous drones, an organic sludge of improvised studio effects adrift in primordial dreams and decomposing psyches. Here, Roach gets terribly close to reenacting Stockhausen's experiments with electronic music.
Not everything shines on this double disc, but Roach has probably opened up new horizons (yet again) for electronic music.

At The Edge Of Everything (2013) documents live performances of 2000.

In Steve Roach's vocabulary, the word "rhythm" has always meant "tribal beats" (as in "primitive civilizations") and mainly performed with Australian/African/Native American percussions. Core (Timeroom, 2001) is an experiment on rhythm that transcends those origins (literal and figurative origins). In a sense, it takes the tribal beat of The Lair and turns it into a frantic, syncopated beat that, at times, sounds like a snippet of the rhythm of Miles Davis' jazz-funk processed through a loop machine (Wings Of Icarus), and at times an accelerated version of Pan Sonic's glitch music (Resonation Revelation). Too much of the album is filler, though, and, while in itself intriguing, the Terry Riley-ian minimalism of Endorphin Dreamtime hardly fits in this project.

Streams & Currents (Projekt, 2002) returns to the concept of Midnight Moon: guitar-based ambient music. The music, mostly improvised, has the "unfinished" and "trivial" quality of Robert Rich's Somnium: it never develops into anything. But where Rich's "triviality" ends up sounding magic and otherworldly, Roach's album sounds merely... unfinished and trivial.

Continuing Core's experiment, Trance Spirits (Projekt, 2002) contains seven tracks of percussive music, vaguely inspired by Roach's favorite themes of primitive trance and cosmic journey. The most powerful is Taking Flight, in which the tribal drums of Jeffrey Fayman and Momodou Kah set an apocalyptic pace that Robert Fripp's guitar and Steve Roach's keyboards tame with an eerily shifting melodic soundscape. (Fayman is actually a synthesist on his own, as proved by A Temple In the Clouds, 2000, which was a previous collaboration with Robert Fripp). The remarkable energy of the opening track is, alas, diluted in the 16-minute meditation/reportage Trance Spirits, and the album never truly recovers, not even when the energy resurfaces in The Calling and In The Same Deep Water. The introspective vein is no less attractive than the tribal one: the keyboards-only Seekers is actually one of Roach's most subliminally disturbing pieces in recent times, and the Fripp-Roach collaboration in Year Of The Horse is soundpainting at its most metaphysical (it could do without the "hybrid groove"). The problem is the same as on previous Roach albums: some ideas are stretched for far too long, without adding much to the first few minutes.

Day Out of Time (2002) is a film soundtrack. All Is Now (2002) is a double-disc of live performances.

Darkest Before Dawn (Timeroom, 2002) delivers another disc-long (74 minutes) composition, a brooding, slowly-advancing dronefest that unfortunately simply repeats itself ad libitum.

Mystic Chords and Sacred Spaces (Projekt, 2003) is a four-CD set, five years in the making, each disc containing a multi-movement hour-long composition: Mystic Chords & Sacred Spaces, Labyrinth, Recent Future, Piece of Infinity.
The first one begins with the celestial beginning of Palace of Nectar, peaks with the neoclassical drift of Within the Mystic, and ends with the ethereal and truly cosmic Vortex Ring.
Labyrinth mixes sounds of birds in the 15-minute Wren and Raven and plunges into a psychedelic spacetime warp with the nine-minute Wonderworld; then it drifts in the ethereal sea of the eleven-minute Dream Body, and loses itself in the sparkling haunted forest of the nine-minute Nameless.
The highlights of Recent Future are: the simple dilated hymn of Turn to Light, the gloomy nebula of Personal Nature and parts of the cinematic The Spiral of Time's Fire Burns On.
The 73-minute Piece of Infinity is the worst offender in terms of redundancy, a languid anemic drone that does very little in 73 minutes other than stare at itself in the mirror. The four discs are, in fact, a good example of "diminishing return". As one progresses, the amount of music that is truly essential diminishes almost exponentially.

Texture Map (2002), that includes a 20-minute leftover from Dreamtime Return, Life Sequence (2003), Texture Maps - The Lost Pieces Vol 3 (2003) and Places Beyond - The Lost Pieces vol 4 (2004) racked up a few more of Roach's "lost pieces".

Fever Dreams (Projekt, 2004), featuring Patrick O'Hearn on bass and Byron Metcalf on percussion (and mostly taken up by the colossal Tantra Mantra), opened a trilogy, continued by Fever Dreams 2 - Holding The Space (2004) and the double-disc Fever Dreams III (2007), that contains the 73-minute Melted Mantra (not a mantra but rather a muffled tribal dance).

Mantram (Projekt, 2004) is a collaboration with Byron Metcalf on percussion and Mark Seelig on bansuri flute in eight untitled parts.

Proof Positive (2006) contains sequencer-driven compositions, notably the frantic Adreno Stream.

Half way between Pauline Oliveros' "deep listening" and Robert Rich's "sleep concerts", Immersion - One (Projekt, 2006), Immersion - Two (Projekt, 2006), Immersion - Three (2007) and Immersion - Four (2009) are colossal "tone meditations for the living space", i.e. largely improvised hour-long pieces of floating electronica. Deliberately missing from this project is the fire of Roach's cosmic journeys.

The double-disc Arc of Passion (2008) documents a live performance of 2007.

Landmass (2008) is one seamless composition which gets divided into sections merely for consumable convenience. The opening (Transmigration) is a cinematic experience fueled by a living low-frequency pulsation, and sets the tone for the first half. The second half is more abstract and diffused, despite the brief sequencer pulsation of Trancemigration.

A Deeper Silence (2008) creates an unlikely meditation space, in which low frequencies derail the horizon while higher-frequency drones wash slowly and gently into each other.

The 40-minute Birth of Still Places, the longest composition of the double-disc Dynamic Stillness (2009), and the 73-minute piece of Afterlight (2009) are close relatives of Immersion - Four (2009), composed around the same time, and they all share the same structural weakness: self-indulgent and fundamentally sterile, just like Piece Of Infinity.

Dynamic Stillness (2009) contains another 100 minutes of music besides Birth of Still Places. The second disc, in particular, contains the suspenseful Further Inside (16:58), the delicate Slowly Revealed (23:55) and especially the icy, barren and windy Canyon Stillness (23:17), an almost documentarian evocation of a desert canyon.

Destination Beyond (2009) is driven by a dancing sequencer that sounds like a broken raga record. The effect is cute for a few minutes but after 30 minutes it becomes a nuisance. The piece then turns into a confused mix of sequencer pulses and cosmic drones.

Sigh Of Ages (2010) adds to his canon the nostalgic Morning of Ages, which almost feels like the neoclassical adagio, the Indian-tinged dance Return of the Majestic, and the giant "om" of Longing to Be.

Immersion Five - Circadian Rhythms (2011) and Groove Immersion (2012) are beat-based projects.

Soul Tones (2012) collects two lengthy compositions. Soul Tones is an extra-long (46 minutes) meditation in the vein of Pieces of Infinity and suffers from the same limitations of development, imagination and pathos. In other words, it's a bit tedious; except that the 28-minute Resolved is even less captivating.

The highlights of Future Flows (2013) are the prayer-like Regeneration Revelation (8:21), the stately organ-like drone of An Omnipresent Sense Prevails (10:58), and the harpsichord-like minimalist patterns of The Texture Of Remembering (11:14). Instead, the longer The Future Flows From Here (16:59) is an overlong and meandering piece that fails to cohere,

Alive In the Vortex (2015) documents a live performance of 2013 at the Vortex Dome in Los Angeles, a pioneering 360-degree total-immersion venue.

The 58-minute piece of Invisible (2015) is a revolving nebula that harbors a core of tribal percussion and sinister noises. About halfway the nebula gets darker and denser, while the internal machinery stops, and the nebula seems to accelerate through the intergalactic void, and then to get trapped inside ripples of spacetime, resulting in one final explosion. It is one of his most dynamic and cinematic compositions.

The 70-minute piece of Bloodmoon Rising (2014) is wildly self-indulgent. The 5-hour 4-disc Bloodmoon Rising (2015) collects four "long-form ultra deep sound immersion zones". Eclipse Mix (2017) is basically a one-hour remix of some of these recordings.

Etheric Imprints (2015) is mainly devoted to the 29-minute Etheric Imprints for highly processed electric grand piano that generates very low booming overtones, one of the most poignant compositions of this phase. The album also contains the dizzying and disorienting clusters of Indigo Shift. The 17-minute Holding Light is simply a "dejavu" of his meandering cosmic music, but the 15-minute The Way Forward has a symphonic quality that pushes the boundary of that format.

Skeleton Keys (2015) collects rather trivial bouncing music for analog synthesizer and analog sequencer, a sort of tribute to the era of Tangerine Dream, but compositions like Saturday Somewhere border on lounge muzak.

Kairos (2015) is a soundtrack to an art video, notably the subaquatic quiet of Etheric Planet, the pulsing tribal-industrial frenzy of Core Regeneration, the fibrillating electricity of Biogenesis,

Shadow of Time (2016) is mainly devoted to the 38-minute Shadow of Time, a suite of dreamy symphonic yearning, but whose structure doesn't justify the long duration.

The 74-minute piece of This Place To Be (2016), boasts a dramatic cinematic opening for about 15 minutes but then we are treated to 25 minutes of a grating drone, and the rest is just a slow decay. Another 74-minute piece, Fade to Gray (2016), came out a few months later, and it is no less self-indulgent than Bloodmoon Rising with long sections of virtually no action.

Painting In The Dark (2016) contains mostly long uneventful pieces like Threshold (17:40) and Phosphene View (12:54), but also the catatonic hymn Painting At The Edge (19:28) that, while overlong, boasts one of his most otherworldly textures.

Nostalgia for the Future (2017) is a rather trivial slow-motion cosmic journey emanating from Roach's desert soundscape and from a sense of the eternal flow of time. Unfortunately, the 20-minute Home Now and the 15-minute For the Future are too long for what they deliver. The 23-minute The Rising Tide is more dramatic in the second half but it's way too little and too late. From the same premises Roach has done much more impressive "structures" in the past.

Molecules of Motion (2018) contains music for vintage synthesizer and sequencer. The centerpiece is the ebullient dancing patterns of Molecules Of Motion (24:21), almost like an electronic version of a traditional folk dance. The rest is filler.

Long Thoughts (2017) require a lot of patience because very little happens in its 73 minutes.

Spiral Revelation (2017) is another album for sequencer that aims for trance-y atmospheres. The humble neoclassical dance embedded in We Continue fails, but the effervescent Finger On The Pulse exudes an almost punk energy. The quasi-symphonic Primary Phase feels like the electronic version of lounge jazz, but the 20-minute Spiral Revelation is truly a vertigo-inducing spiral of musical patterns, although it may be ten minutes too long.

The highlight of Mercurius (2018) is the 28-minute Immanent, that projects a sense of intimacy and acceptance.

Electron Birth (2018) documents a 55-minute live improvisation.

The 73-minute piece of Atmosphere for Dreaming (2018), conceived "for infinite looped playback", tries to recapture the magic of The Dream Circle by incorporating sounds of nature, and generally creating a denser flow than the previous "long-form" explorations (Long Thoughts, This Place To Be, Fade to Gray and Bloodmoon Rising).

Bloom Ascension (2019) contains more music for vintage synthesizer and sequencer. The feverish 16-minute title-track is interesting for the first few minutes but fails to evolve. The rest is filler.

Trance Archeology (2019) opens with the turbulent 18-minute soundscape Spawn Of Time (which alas doesn't know where to go after half time) and offers an elegant example of meandering cosmic music in the 16-minute Trance Archeology.

Stillpoint (2019) contains two hour-long improvisations conceived again "for infinite looped playback": Serenity in Waves and Deeper...Still.

Tomorrow (2020) contains restless and tumultuous pieces for sequencer, notably Tomorrow (20:01); but Optimal Being (24:16) is incredibly trivial, HeartBreath (19:27) is quasi-danceable lounge muzak, and A Different Today (11:55) feels like an inferior version of Tomorrow. In other words, one decent composition and the rest is filler.

Stratus (2020) Deeper (2020)

Into the Majestic (2021) collects the live 50-minute improvisation Into the Majestic, which is basically a gallery of Steve Roach-ian cliches, and the 24-minute The Spiral Heart

Phoenix Rising (2021) documents live performances on sequencers.

A Soul Ascends (2020) contains three lengthy compositions, notably the stately The Radiant Return (32:14), drenched in lush sonic colors, Reflection in Ascension (25:42) with mildly exotic rhythm and feathery melodic fragments; but both are overlong with plenty of repetition and some awkward sections.

Journeys to the Infinite (2020) is a compilation that contains Flatlands (off Desert Solitaire), Artifacts (off Origins), Realm of Refraction (off Light Fantastic), Neural Connection (off Blood Machine), Skeleton Passage (off Live in Tucson), Vortex 8 (off Alive in the Vortex), Indigo Moon (off Trance Archeology), and Longing to Be (off Sigh of Ages).

Roach also released a number of collaborations with Serena Gabriel (harmonium, voice, temple bells) such as the 74-minute piece of Nectar Meditation (2020), the album Inanna's Dream (2020), which contains the 49-minute Changing Tides, and the 15-minute piece of the EP Remembrance In Waves (2020).