Exposé Online banner

Exposé Online

Not just outside the box, but denying the existence of boxes.
Covering music from the fringes since 1993.

Reviews

Steve Roach — Atmospheric Conditions
(Timeroom Editions 4, 1999, CD)

by Mike McLatchey, Published 2000-05-01

Atmospheric Conditions Cover art

Atmospheric Conditions is the third CD-length, deep ambient piece on Roach’s Timeroom label, following up on the recent Slow Heat (reviewed in issue #17). The CD explores an ambient path unlike his recent collaboration with Vidna Obmana or The Dream Circle. The first 20 minutes of the CD form a sound painting that reminds me of Roach’s collaboration with David Hudson, Gunyal, a sound that is dripping with Cretaceous resonance, sounds of undetermined fauna floating in on an electric and alien cosmos. This is a fascinating direction I’d like to see more of, a piece of slow ambient richness, yet vibrantly alive in the same way Ariel Kalma and Richard Tinti’s Osmose is, letting the created biosphere provide its own music. Soon after this landscape floats away, the middle part of the CD returns to more familiar territories similar to Slow Heat where the synth chords move slowly with a sacred feel, reaching the CD’s most meditative point. Roach continues to move the music through varying segments, into a small part with synth percussion similar to Ascension of Shadows, through cloudy ambient washes, into a dark almost atonal piece, with synth winds flitting about like specters. The cavernous closing segment creates a warm finale, like many of Roach’s CDs, fading back into the dream. Although, the CD has five parts and three titles, it is still more or less one long 73 minute piece, perhaps a little more varied compared to earlier projects. It is perhaps one of the most fascinating CDs of Roach’s career in that the approach to ambient does not resemble as much the trance-like qualities of his earlier works in the field. It moves from soundscape to soundscape, like walking through a monumental art exhibit. Highly recommended for drifters.

Filed under: New releases, Issue 19, 1999 releases

Related artist(s): Steve Roach

More info
http://steveroach.bandcamp.com/album/atmospheric-conditions

 

What's new

These are the most recent changes made to artists, releases, and articles.