But there exists a more transcendent side of Roach's sonic endeavors, wherein his thought-provoking electronics evoke a sense of limitless space.

Roach's live performances of electronic music have taken him far and wild: from concert halls in the United States, Canada and Europe to lava caves in the Canary Islands and volcanic craters in Mexico.

Globally recognized as a leading innovator of contemporary electronic music, Roach has released over 40 albums since 1981. The following are just a few of his recent releases.
 

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STEVE ROACH: The Magnificent Void (CD on Fathom Records, a division of Hearts of Space Music)

Normally known for his arid electronic stylings inspired by desert wastelands or ancient tribal influences, Steve Roach applies his ethereal ambience to the primordial emptiness with this 70-minute CD.

Superbly capturing the void, this music is soft and non-intrusive, drifting with a sedate peacefulness. The airy tones sigh into existence, tinged by a wave of background radiation. The presence of a distant star brings a sudden heaviness to the auralscape, but this passes, allowing the meditative mood to resume.

A striking aspect to Roach's music is its ability to transcend normal ambience, achieving a state that is far more richer than a new age sonic backdrop. His music possesses a sense of tension and awe that permeates while not disturbing the prevalent calm.

RealAudio samples:

Between the Gray and the Purple
Infinite Shore
The Magnificent Void

STEVE ROACH: On This Planet (CD on Fathom Records)

This music is a wondrous fusion of tribal instruments and contemporary electronics. Roach's cunning compositional talent weaves these sonic tangents together, creating an earthy array of electronic textures embodied with ethereal passion by prehispanic flutes, didgeridoo, and assorted primitive percussion instruments, like clay water pots.

Using layered waves of electronic moodiness, Roach builds repeated plateaus of sonic awe, conjuring grandly sculpted cloudbanks to roil and crash about the elevated listener. Drifting through these mists, tribal rhythms approach to spiral through the ambience, urging the tones to ascend to more epic altitudes. Part of the beauty is how Roach never resorts to World Beat rhythms, keeping the beat soft and languid. Despite his use of ancient ethnic instruments, the music defies nationality, achieving unity in a global sound that is unique to Roach himself.

For the last three songs (totaling 38 minutes), the pace picks up with delightful rhythms and shuddering melodic tonalities. These livelier passages are powerful without getting abrasive, retaining a degree of sedateness that is unperturbed by the accelerated tempos. Naturally, these pieces build to even loftier heights, leaving the listener breathless at the edge of the stratosphere.

This 73-minute CD won the Association for Independent Music award as 1997's Album of the Year in the electronic/ambient category.

RealAudio samples:

Journey of One
Remember It Now
Void Memory 4

STEVE ROACH: Slow Heat (CD on Timeroom Editions)

This release from 1998 features one long 71-minute track, comprised of Roach's slowburn atmospherics. Electronic crickets welcome the listener to this auralscape, joined soon by less identifiable insects noises that punctuate an air of breathing slow tonalities.

Roach's Arizona desert habitat was the setting and inspiration for this music, capturing that part of the day when the spell of the heat holds sway over all life and even inanimate objects. His attempts to evoke the stillness of that imposed calm are superb, while notably featuring far more than a drifting near-silence.

His electronic pulses are powerful and rich with delicate moments of breathtaking grandeur. It is a soft power, though; one that broods and expands with deceptive speed. This passive slowbuild achieves several points of cosmic transcendence that are positively shrill.

RealAudio sample:

Slow Heat

STEVE ROACH: Light Fantastic (CD on Fathom Records)

For this 59-minute release from 1999 Roach (on analog and digital soundworlds, hybrid and fractal groove creations, and acoustic percussion) is joined by Vidna Obmana (on fujara sample food performance), Vir Unis (on filter and fractal groove creation infusions), and Stefin Gordon (on tamboura).

As one might expect, there's much more going on here than Roach's usual ambience. The calming music is busy with sedate rhythms, alive with chiggering electronics that agitate his drifting tones into a lushly melodic flow. The waves of refracted sound bask the listener in a glittering cascade of high-end drones and trembling synthesizers. The percussives are not overt, tastefully impelling the tunes with their soft propulsion.

The result of this fusion of fractal technology and acoustic percussion is one of subtle impact, mesmerizing the subconscious with uplifting soundscapes of astral scope.

RealAudio samples:

Trip the Light
Realm of Refraction
The Luminous Return

STEVE ROACH: Atmospheric Conditions (CD on Timeroom Editions)

This 1999 release features 73 minutes of extremely atmospheric ambience.

Electronic tones breathe and sigh, drifting on lazy aerial currents. Subsequent tones sneakily creep into the mix, their introduction as subtle as their effects. The subliminal presence of a soft tempo is far too tenuous to attach any distinct rhythm to the music, just as the use of environmental sounds fails to ground the atmospheric tones.

Overall, this is minimalist, but substantial. A relaxing auralscape of ethereal, evolving textures intended to function as an unobtrusive background . . . quite like the mood implied by the release's title.

The last of this CD's three tracks (itself 27 minutes in duration) was recorded live in Italy as part of the Deep Listening Weekend in the spring of 1999. The rest of the CD was recorded live that same year in Roach's Arizona studio.

RealAudio sample:

Atmospheric Conditions

STEVE ROACH & VIR UNIS: Body Electric (CD on Projekt Records)

This 1999 collaboration features a prominent rhythmic basis for the curious and mind-expanding electronics which grace this 57-minute CD.

This percussive element (described by the musicians as prehispanic and shamanic) embodies the music's uptempo modernism with an arcane edge. The tribal patterns are not just restricted to ancient instruments, often being synthetically generated to snicker amidst the shimmering electronic atmospherics. As a result, this music possesses a wider appeal, capable of enticing the interest of those normally bored by ambience.

Despite this percussive demeanor, the music retains a flowing nature. The melodies ooze like fluids in an aerial ballet, producing an evolutionary feel to the outstanding auralscapes.

Of particular interest is the CD's cover art by Steven Rooke, who has gained well-deserved notoriety for his evolutionary computer art. Through the cover and a trio of insert cards, the nature of Rooke's digital organisms unfold with breathtaking splendor, depicting a visual corollary to the futurist mandala generated by Roach and Unis.

RealAudio samples:

Born of Fire
Pure Evolution
Mind Link
The New Dream

STEVE ROACH: Midnight Moon (CD on Projekt Records)

With this 73-minute release from 2000, Roach moves his moody atmospherics to the realm of processed guitars. But expect no twang or power chords here; the music remains astral and spectral. The guitar notes are sparse, their main power stemming from the way Roach bends the sounds, stretching each note into an expansive auralscape of its own.

Soft tones drift in a dark place, sighing pitches that engage in languid interplay amid their minimal afterglow. The notes are generally shimmering, delicate vibrations that extend with a slow decay to dwindle in the distance. This fading interplay generates a very calming predilection that gives the listener a definite sense of aerial buoyancy.

Add to this a fretless bass, handled in similarly fragile manner. This produces the illusion of solid ground . . . far far beneath the mix.

The result of all this is a luxuriously relaxing experience, laced with a lunar allure.

RealAudio samples:

Ancestors Circle
Midnight Loom
Hope

If you're interested in hearing Roach's ethereal electronics in conjunction with more traditional use of guitars, check out "Dust to Dust" by Steve Roach and Roger King (CD on Projekt Records). King's searing electric guitar and plaintive acoustic guitar blend with Roach's arid soundscapes, exquisitely generating an intriguing sonic portrait of the American West.