core

With Core, the ever gifted and prolific Steve Roach has created yet another work of sheer sonic mastery, that demonstrates, yet again, that the only person that can outdo Roach is Roach! Core is an interesting combination of two of Roach’s favorite sound worlds, the rhythmic and the atmospheric. With neither taking the center stage for long, he carefully and thoughtfully blends the timbral elements, rhythms, and his, by now, lush, trademark Roach chordings to absolute and complete sonic perfection. Core is very reminiscent of Roach’s early-’80s recordings Empetus and Now/Traveler, as this is a period of Roach’s work that every fan or otherwise should be familiar with. Core in a lot ways has the feel both sonically and emotionally of that period with its smooth, organic synth-pad chordings and its dense, almost sequencer-like rhythms, which aren’t as rhythmically metered as the works of the 1980s, but it’s almost like a complimentary atmospheric percussion that blends subtly in, completing the whole of the work. Roach has captured an excellent sonic and musical vocabulary with Core. This recording is recommended to fans of Roach’s earlier, more sequencer-based music period, as well as all fans of electronica. – Matt Borghi