life sequence

They Say...

Review by Thom Jurek, All Music Guide

That electro-acoustic composer Steve Roach would consider revisiting his early analogue synthesizer work and reshaping it for release is an interesting concept. Looking back for the purpose of rediscovery is always a calculated risk. Roach has been in the depths of atmospheric pieces for a long while now, pushing further and further on the artificial Cartesian boundary that separates emptiness from form. To revisit the notion of form from his current perspective is to see it in a different way, as an attempt to free oneself of the same boundary by engaging it as the thing itself. Many of these pieces are a decade-and-a-half old at least, and offer hints of what was to come, to be sure. But the poetic is in the work itself. These modalities, when applied to the shorter pieces, offer a glimpse of the terrain where the pulse is constant; it always looks for pathways of transition and transformation. Where his evolved musical self is grafted on to the earlier constructs, swathes of sound are cut from the heart of silence and layered through -- not on top of -- the earlier pieces, and the listener can experience the tautness of sonic and atmospheric evolution from process to result. "Sundial" and "Sands of Time," two hinge pieces in this set, are more recent. They are collaborations with electronics artist Paul Ellis and came from rehearsals for a joint concert. Despite the innovations of technology, Roach sticks to his guns and looks to grow the pulse out, to wind it around on itself and reach in as a form of getting "out there" -- where the serpent swallows its own tail and keeps going, only space remains and the trace of what existed before. In other words, in the shifting, winding, whirring marriage of ambience, rhythms, and melodic fragments pulled along a line that breaks and begins, something opens in the fissures to bridge not only past and present in Roach's evolutionary aesthetic as a musician, but also his interior use of space and non-space -- as in pulse and breath. Ultimately, Life Sequence is beautiful and soulful to be sure, but it is also quite remarkable. Roach's Timeroom Editions are only available from his web site.