Steve Roach nos presenta un nuevo trabajo, publicado como es habitual por el sello Projekt. A estas alturas, presentar al gran Steve Roach no tiene demasiado sentido, es un compositor que ha conseguido crear un propio género, un propio estilo y que tiene una gran carrera compositiva detrás y pese a todo, sigue publicando nuevos trabajos, sigue aportando nuevas ideas y nos sigue mostrando su mundo disco tras disco.

Back To Life es el título de su nuevo trabajo, una nueva incursión en el peculiar mundo de Steve Roach. Dividido en dos cds, este trabajo nos vuelve a introducir en el particular mundo que ha conseguido crear el compositor, en ese mundo de sonidos profundos, de sonidos terrenales, de sonidos de las piedras como algunos comentaron en su momento y es que su particular forma compositiva, su peculiar sonido, la textura de sus composiciones, nos hacen sentir como si no introdujeramos en el interior de nuestro planeta.

En el primer cd nos encontramos con siete piezas, cada una de ellas con ese particular sonido, ese sonido etéreo que parece que nos sobrevuela y que se apodera de nosotros, mientras que en el segundo cd, nos encontramos con una suite de 70 minutos de una verdera exploración del sonido. Steve Roach es un compositor que disco tras disco sigue aportando su particular grano de arena al mundo musical, ese mundo particular de su música, ese mundo donde el sonido nos hace sentir, nos sumerge en otro espacio-tiempo y este Back To Life no podía ser una excepción. Cómo una "vuelta a la vida" este trabajo nos va envolviendo y nos va creando esa sensación de resurgir desde el interior de nuestro planeta, que bien pudiera ser el resurgir desde nuestro interior para poder abrir los ojos y apreciar la belleza que nos rodea.

The constant flow that is Steve Roach's creative life in motion continues into 2012 with the release of another double-disc effort. Back to Life is very much one of Roach's more restrained and meditative releases; here his trademark texturing and layering of electronic elements seek to flow mysteriously instead of suggesting full-on sonic doom or empty spaces at the end reaches of the universe. If there's a sense of the haunting in "Cloud Cover," it's more in the realm of atmospherics rather than lingering dread, while "Tranquility Base" lives up to its pun of a title -- it may be set on a moonscape but it's a relaxed visit. The short, sweeter feeling of "Touchstones" acts as a bit of a contrast to "Mist of Perception" on a key front -- the latter is another one of Roach's CD-length compositions at a full 70 minutes. The uninterrupted progression of the song sums up the feeling of the first disc and extends it, and if it makes Back to Life yet another long and involved Steve Roach disc, as with so many of his releases it's a thoroughly enjoyable result. -Neg Raggett

Style: Tranquil, silken deep, medium and long-form ambient.
Back To Life is a two CD package that Steve explains as entering a new phase of his long-form symphonic ambient works; an arcing trajectory that follows on from such previous albums as The Magnificent Void, Mystic Chords and Sacred Spaces, Dynamic Stillness and Sigh of Ages. Opening with Where Rasa Lives, a fine cloud of sound rises up out of nothingness, expanding into hazy enormity. Initially the music might appear minimal in its dream-like, drifting tranquillity; yet there are many depths and layers to these recordings. The almost fifteen minute opener wafts and swells beatless for much of its length then - almost imperceptibly as if maybe the listener merely imagines it - a faint beat of soft padding pulses arises - the effect is a little like hearing the body's internal sounds, shifting as the ear focuses and refocuses. Tranquility Base segues gently in from its predecessor with a lazy sequencer pattern and heavenly pads. A sense of wonder, of disquiet even, sets in as distantly voice-like threads haunt the drone mists. The lengthy Mist of Perception is a meandering ambient symphony that moves from cavernous expanses through dull throbbing rhythms to weightless floating and deep submersion. This is a monumental creation that will either hang in the air, delicately scenting the atmosphere or engross pull you in, revealing constant subtle or hidden aspects depending upon how you choose to listen.

Artwork: Back To Life is a beautiful six panel digipack with panoramic imagery spread across the outside. Bright bubbles gleam with an almost metallic clarity, sharp highlights and multitudinous beaming arcs. Thrown into attractive bokeh, the more distant water droplets take on increasing haziness as they recede, eventually softening so much as to merge with the ultra-blurred background. Track titles are on the rear section of the cover with track times alongside - little other text. Within, again information is sparse: the left panel reveals that Steve's gear employed included analog and digital hardware synthesizers and processors as well as Eurorack analog modular system. The remaining two inner sections hold the discs in plastic frames.

Overall: This latest Steve Roach release is delivered through the Projekt label as a twin disc pack, however, it is also available from Steveroach.com as part of a box set with Groove Immersion - the website explains that this latter presentation is an "elegant German-made black box with faceplate, containing Back To Live and Groove Immersion. Each box is signed and numbered, limited to 500 copies. Includes cover art micro posters exclusive to the box. Unsigned copies also available by special request." Back To Life itself is comprised of one disc with seven compositions ranging from four minutes seven seconds to sixteen forty one and a second disc with an enormous long-form piece of sixty nine minutes fifty nine seconds. You can listen to the music at the Steve Roach website or at Projekt.

From wherever you are in whatever you're doing, Back to Life is a bridge to the world out front to the world way in back, the world behind the world. Back to Life teaches us to listen. To listen to the present moment is to merge with a vast, spaciousness out of which creations come. With everything else taken away, all thought, we remember from the soundworld how to listen from the periphery, we become the sound aware of us, so present to it, it's as if we're operating out of it at each moment, breathing within it.
It reminds each of us of the majesty of who we are down deep, as we connect from emerging futures through the sound portal, like co-creative alchemists realizing latent possibilities to rising up from the depths, helping us come home to the sacred projects we have yet to finish. This space is so pregnant, anything old must die, as everything new must come. Back to Life is this process of renouncing into life anew.

Thank you Steve for helping listeners like me get Back to Life, and listen to pings of the present moment, out of which patterns of energy in certain order transcends the past, as this moment is playing through us symbiotically with the way the soundworld is played through you. -John Davidson

Back to Life finds Roach returning to broader expanses, the “symphonic ambient” of Mystic Chords and Sacred Spaces and Dynamic Stillness. Although Roach slides a little rhythm into the track “Tranquility Base” on the first disc, Back to Life largely keeps to the formula of long, airy, criss-crossing pads matched in places with deep, low-end engine-rumbles. Roach modulates the density and intensity nicely, really building it up toward the end of the title track, the last on disc one, until the sounds are bold and thick and at their enveloping, calming best. Disc two is a single long-form piece, “The Mist of Perception.” Roach gives this hour over to very quiet flows, again lacing it with that airiness that speaks of vastness. A beautiful, meditation-ready piece of work that stretches time as it moves through zones of light and light shadow. This easily stands with Roach’s best soft long-form works.

Emblematic musical figure, true master and pioneer of the sacred space music genre, Steve Roach is back with a mesmerizing collection of long-form synthesized soundscapes. The content is focused on sound-energies, on the highly vibrating and spiritual dimension of flexuous sound waves. Back to Life is a marvelously floating and aerial musical voyage which resonates in deep space. As in most of Steve Roach releases, this last can perfectly interacts with meditative exercises of self-realization and spiritual rebirth. The album alternates subtly moving soundscapes made of nebulous waves in the pure classical tradition of the cosmic new agey drone movement (ie. “Everything inside”) with sonically dark and intense experiments (ie. “Where Rasa Lives”). The abstract and tremendously astral epic entitled “Mist of Perception” culminates the whole album with some otherworldly sound textures. Back to Life generates prolific inner visions and delivers a radically meditative musical experience to attain eternal serenity of the soul and supreme happiness. Musically and aesthetically closed to other prestigious artists of the blissed out space drone genre (Klaus Wiese, Matthias Grassow, Alio Die). Warmly recommended for those who like relaxing and expansive musical processions. This album is also a great introduction to new comers in deep ambient music and complex tendencies of spacey new age music. -Philippe Blanche

Negli ultimi tempi in tanti, troppi, fra critici e opinionisti, hanno diffuso e sostenuto una tesi secondo la quale la musica ambient "classica", nella sua forma pura e incontaminata, starebbe subendo una crisi irreversibile. Costoro trovano proprio in questo la causa principale della recente proliferazione di svariate scene intente nella missione di offrirne interpretazioni ed evoluzioni inedite - su tutte quella derivata dalla rivoluzione glitch di Fennesz e del suo "Endless Summer", dall'avanguardia elettro-acustica di stampo drone (Tim Hecker, Philip Jeck, Helios) o dal rinnovamento dei canoni classici (i vari Eluvium, Loscil, Pan American, Stars Of The Lid).

Alla stessa ragione è da molti stata ricondotta una presunta parabola discendente che avrebbe colpito i portabandiera del genere, dal padre assoluto Brian Eno (il cui bellissimo "Small Craft On A Milk Sea" di due anni fa venne zittito con superficialità da più parti) passando per i vari Lustmord e Harold Budd, e per colui che è in tutto e per tutto il teorizzatore della forma moderna dell'ambient tutta: Steve Roach.

L'esplosione creativa del californiano - capace di sfornare nel periodo tra il 2000 e il 2008 dai tre ai cinque dischi all'anno, collaborazioni e live esclusi - ha contribuito non poco a servire l'occasione per stroncare la sua opera, ignorando totalmente i continui progressi e le mille sfaccettature che la sua musica è stata in grado di assumere di album in album.

Nel 2012 Roach festeggia i trentatré anni dal suo debutto sulle scene, durante i quali ha saputo - non senza subire qualche battuta d'arresto - indossare i panni più disparati, donare alla sua musica una miriade di forme in una ricerca che, al contrario di quanto sostenuto da coloro di cui sopra, non si è mai fermata. E Back To Life sembra essere qua apposta per dimostrarcelo.

Rispetto al precedente e non troppo riuscito Groove Immersion, il disco torna ad assestarsi su un'ambient rarefatta e "disturbata" e a presentare la struttura di doppio album brani più suite, in una formula non distante da lavori precedenti come Midnight Moon e Circles & Artifacts. Le disfunzioni si rivelano a tratti sotto forma di ritmo pulsante (il quarto d'ora di humus caustico di "Tranquillity Base"), ad altri mediante inserti glitch (gli oscuri presagi di "Cloud Cover", la temibile morsa di "The Wonder Of It All"). Altrove la forma si rifà più da vicino alle esplorazioni cosmico-metafisiche di The Magnificent Void, come nel flusso languido di "Touchstones" o nei droni epici della splendida title track. A porsi in eccezione sono le atmosfere minimali e ovattate di "Everything Inside", il pastiche ciclo-melodico di "Where Rasa Lives" e l'ora abbondante di "Mist Of Perception", autentico viaggio nella percezione dei sensi che occupa interamente il secondo disco.

Back To Life è album fedele alla linea stilistica divenuta trademark di Roach, ma non per questo estraneo alla contaminazione delle tendenze contemporanee. È un disco ambient in tutto e per tutto, di quell'ambient pura che per taluni è, come già detto, sempre più malridotta: eppure nei suoi brani si respira un'aria fresca e attuale, non certo rivoluzionaria né "nuova", ma totalmente al passo con i tempi. Qualcosa che è avvenuto - c'è da dirlo - in nove decimi della sua produzione recente, quella stessa perennemente bollata come "tutta uguale", "autoreferenziale" e "statica". Con buona pace dei vari detrattori, Roach è ancora fra noi, e con lui l'ambient tutta. O forse, la verità è che entrambi non se ne sono mai andati: tra una presunta crisi e l'altra, la carne al fuoco è di nuovo tanta e promette di continuare a esserlo.

Big comeback of Steve Roach? But did he ever leave? No, definitely not a comeback, but certainly a big one!!! No question about this, because Back To Life double CD presents The Master at the very top of his unmeasurable creativity and invention. Together with Groove Immersion it comprises "Steve Roach 2012 Box Set", so a very hot item. Both these titles are sold also separately, but missing this box set in my own collection would be a big mistake. "Where Rasa Lives" fires the show with gracefully floating ambience clocking to 15-minute mark, but after 9 minutes "hidden" crystalline grooves enter the stage. On the first "look" it sounds quite minimal, but careful listening explores all kinds of sounds and atmospheres, all interacting precisely, carefully balanced and graciously moving just like the droplets on the album's cover image (absolutely gorgeous work by Kristina Kotarski, the hellfirediva!!!). "Where Rasa Lives" is one of the best and most tranquil pieces of music Steve ever did (and he did a whole bunch of them!), a pure symphony for my ears!!! "Cloud Cover" lives and breathes, again packed with amazing sounds and noises, Steve's soundsculpting shifts this composition into another level, a level solely occupied by him now! It's heavy thunderous piece that smoothly transfers after 6 minutes into serenely drifting washes peppered by some highly attractive noisier ingredients.
The title of the next track speaks for itself, "Tranquility Base". Gently pulsing slow-mo trancey/tribal grooves join the show for another truly exciting, one of its kind, sonic pleasure. It's ultra deeply absorbing 16-minute bliss!!! "The Wonder Of It All" moves back to louder plateau with more monstrous, spiraling dronescapes, powerful and grandeur, another top-notch adventure!!! The next composition, "Touchstones", strikes with its intensity and drama. And it keeps on rolling, because "Everything Inside" is breathtaking odyssey into the deep cave to explore its stunningly spectacular sceneries. Steve at his most droning!!! And the title track is yet to come... The closing part of disc 1, "Back To Life" keeps on the route, less massive, but still quite symphonic and later uplifted with fragile groovy flavours. Absolutely grandiose finale of the first half!!! Disc 2 features 70-minute long form composition breathing with many of the finest spices from the first disc and creating continuous flow of deeply absorbing ambience drifting through richly colored organic passages and movements, again showcasing refined artistry of its virtuoso. The future is now!!! Back To Life 2xCD is without any doubt one of the best and most groundbreaking recordings of 2011 (or 2012?). No matter, I think it's just a question of time before Back To Life will become another milestone not only in Steve's phenomenal career, but also in the ambient genre as a whole. Yes, a truly genius, all-inclusive, performance by this ambient giant, and for me, a truly magnificent and immersing lifelong sonic experience!!! Life is so beautiful!!! -Richard Gürtler

This release from 2012 features 144 minutes of beguiling ambience. Ambience in its purest form is attractive; ambience that skirts the boundary between harmonic and melodic structure is even better. And that's what this release does.

The application of harmonic atmospherics results in a hypnotic state, but inject hints of melody within those textural flows and you get auralscapes that subliminally stimulate the psyche with tantalizing threads for the mind to pursue. As auxiliary layers slide into play, the placid sonic environs become a realm of potential surprises. Each new tonal element thickens the mix and steers the listener's consciousness into fresh neural pathways, escalating the fruitfulness of contemplation.

Normally, Roach's ambient compositions are presented in long, CD-spanning tracks. And while the second disc offers just that, disc 1 breaks the flow into several distinct songs. Okay, some of them stream together seamlessly, but the astute listener can detect how each piece differs in temperament and structure; even the sounds which define the music change as the CD progresses. Grittier contributions enter the mix, chittering with eerie evocation, tempered by flowing electronics of a crystalline nature. Non-percussive beats rise into play amidst celestial passages.

Meanwhile, disc 2 brims with conventionally structured soundscapes that evolve gradually, adding layers while others fade, achieving an illusionary environment of seeming uniformity (which the more discerning listener easily recognizes as no uniformity at all as the elements ebb and surface with languid dependability). One can easily become lost in the vaporous flow.

Naturally, the music is all designed to aid the audience in subtracting the real world from their perceptions so they can immerse themselves in undistracted reflection. Or (if meditation's not your thing) the music serves as a beautiful backdrop for just sitting around and daydreaming. -Matt Howarth

Year after year the American label Projekt continues to support Steve Roach's crazy creative prolificacy with beautiful albums which follow the intuitive curves of the synthesist hermit of the Californian deserts. Ambiences stigmatized within iridescent breaths and delicate rhythms which pulsate with the fear of evaporating these breezes as much lyric as clanic, Back to Life is a beautiful album which presents the best of both atmospheric universes from Steve Roach.

It’s with a mixture of earthly and lunar breaths that opens "Where Rasa Lives". Like a resounding noise of an engine propelling an intergalactic vessel floating at low speed, the synth layers get agglutinate to form a dense and intense sound veil from where are escaping more crystal clear veins which shine in a thick magma of synth larva. The signature of Roach is perceptible with his synth layers which float and blend with this strange subjugation that the synthesist gives to his long movements of lyrical stillness while bright musical effects strew the slow and tortuous procession up until some muffled rhythms, initiated by fine clanic rattles at about the 10th minute. Rhythms which shake discreetly the morphic waltz of the stratified layers and which go out some 4 minutes later, leading "Where Rasa Lives" towards its hearth of contemplativity. The breezes of "Cloud Cover" are even more overwhelming. They build up like big black clouds and smother an eclectic musical fauna stuffed with droning elements. Unstable the movement dies down to embrace a phase of metallic humming, shifting the cold tranquility of "Cloud Cover" towards the warm spiritual rhythms of the soft poetic drums from "Tranquility Base". This title is pure Roach with a rhythmic structure finely livened up by aboriginal tom-toms which structure a soporific and hallucinogenic trance that superb spectral stratas cover by mesmerizing wandering hoots. "The Wonder of It All" and "Touchstones" bring us back into the tetanized universe of the introduction with layers filled by a fine taste of bluish metal which fly over a sluggish structure while the iridescent breaths of "Everything Inside" are warmer. Breaths which overflow towards the title-track and metamorphose into an immense pond of opaline waves whose silvery singings glide over the same rhythmic spasms which shook "Where Rasa Lives", but over a longer period, looping the loop of Back to Life first CD. It’s in an absolute peace of mind that "Mist of Perception" takes place. This long title fed by stratas of synth which float as a mass of warm air is discreetly guided by muffled knockings of which the slightly arrhythmic pulsations are smothered by the discreet hummings of subterranean machinery. It’s a long linear movement where the synth layers to silvery tones and the galvanized hoops intertwine to form an opaque iron curtain. A veil of iron moving on a static rhythm which dies out with the patience of its long procession in the immersive fogs of the synths to tones as warm as dreamlike.

There is only Steve Roach for insufflate a musicality to musical forms printed by a rhythmic stillness. Back to Life follows the long dark and ambient corridors of Dynamic Stillness and Sigh of Ages It’s an extremely meditative album where some fragments of rhythms which decorate the profound dreamlike atmospheres add a new dimension to the musical approaches dedicated to meditation. Tribal, atmospheric, ambient and cosmic; Back to Life is another milestone in Steve Roach's career which not only sculptures but also controls rhythms as much morphic and hypnotic which are superb complements to his dances of winds. - Sylvain Lupari (2012)