Steve Roach's latest foray into ambient space music sees him this time teaming up with Vidna Obmana, who here plays a Hungarian overtone wind instrument. Together, Roach and Obmana create eerie textural soundscapes and inner-journey pieces that range from two to a whopping 25 minutes. These pieces unfurl like incense smoke and dissolve into the room, leaving a heady sensation. Generally, I've never cared for Roach's music, because as an ambient artist, his material didn't always have bite or edginess to it, rather he tended to atmospheric wash bordering on new age. This time around, I am pleased to say that Inner Zone is edgy and deliciously creepy, where the listener may get the impression of wailing ghosts passing beneath steep canyons. The title track is among the more impressive on this disc, as Roach uses electro-rhythmic patterns that give the piece form and substance. -I. Khider

Individually, Steve Roach and vidnaObmana are both amazing musicians, masters of dark and tribal ambient musics that seamlessly meld organic and electronic sounds into transcendent visions. But when they get together, something truly magic happens. Mixing Steve Roach's more active, percussive approach with vidnaObmana's gentle, fluid flute and synths produces something entirely new, a hybrid at once deeply soothing and profoundly unsettling. InnerZone is their fifth collaboration, and although it's not the masterpiece that their joint Well Of Souls (1995) was, it's still an excellent CD that's well worth having. Except for the 25-minute title track, much of InnerZone has a more terrestrial than celestial feel, favoring explorations of inner rather than outer space. The album opens by placing you "At the Edge of Everything," with vast expanses of icy, menacing synths expanding on all sides as you stand at the border separating everything you've ever known from the wonders and terrors that lie beyond (or within). From across the edge you hear faint flutes, insectlike clickings and birdlike twitterings, chiming bells, and as you step closer to hear better, you suddenly realize you've crossed into the unknown.... Tribal drums, electronic percussion, flutes, and waves of dark synths buoy you onward, showing you the "Strands," the sacred rituals of the everyday that link every living and nonliving thing together. Walking, you turn to look at the once familiar landscape around you, and see it's all changed somehow, all numinous and interconnected now. For the first time you see how each step you take sends a wave of energy into the ground that shakes the nearby tree imperceptibly, startling a bird in its branches into song or flight, which in turns carries that same wave of energy into the clear blue sky. Gradually the track slows and slides into more shadowed realms; night follows night as the wave expands outward across your lifetime, and on into the vast universe beyond. With "Isolation," a low synth carries you out into a vast, empty sea, with touches of Steve Roach's ambient guitar cresting the waves. Slowly the sea flows into a cavern, with you alone in its enveloping darkness, the quiet guitar notes becoming the words you speak into the echoing silence. Electronic percussion joins tribal flutes, simple and lovely, the rich voice of the ancients answering your inner calls. Drums begin a rhythmic beat, louder and louder, joined by frenetic percussion, building faster and faster as your mind opens and the visions from the collective unconscious pour in, quicker than you could possibly hope to comprehend them, until the track finally fades, leaving you alone to explore the rest of the InnerZone. - Dave Aftandilian

Like a snoring surreal creature, this collaboration between two of the underground's best-known ambient electronic composers encompasses tribal rhythms, Middle Eastern textures, experimental guitars and soaring keyboard effects. From the otherworldly beats of "strands" and "isolation" to the deep, cold aquatic sounds of "encounter passage," Steve Roach and vidnaObmada orchestrate a hauntingly atmospheric work that is equal parts electronica and live instrumentation. InnerZone entwines slithering and pulsing jungle beats with sweeping and sinister acoustic and electro reverberations for a dream-like quality that makes you never want to awaken. - Jonathan Williams (Music Editor)

This 73 minute release from 2002 marks the latest collaboration between Roach and Obmana. Combining their ambient expertise, these renowned musicians produce a haunting journey into abstract zones of atmospheric soundscapes that are rich with rhythm and substance. The music guides the listener into dreamlike states while retaining consciousness, goading that awareness into contemplative reflection with elongated textures and liquid woodwinds and the soft patter of tribal percussives. Electronic clouds collect overhead, summoned by the call of parched flutes. Gentle percussives that echo with a simultaneous acoustic and mechanistic overtone generate a spiritual march through marshlands of shimmering mists of sighing tonalities. While generally atmospheric, this music has strong melodic content. The low-hanging haze of sedate tones creates an on-going hum, which in turn is enhanced by the overlapping textures of other instruments delineating alternate harmonies. The fusion of Roach's arid ambience and Obmana's echoing caverneque sound creates an interface that merges these contrasting evocations into a realm of unprecedented properties: a subterranean region that possesses an infinite sky, a union of earth and heaven. Most of the tracks on this release explore shorter structures of ambience, while the title track is a 26 minute example of how such strains and sonic allusions can be harnessed in long-form, unhurried by compression and allowed to unfold with more cosmic proportions.

In a typical CD review, the critic judges the competence, commercial viability and artistic adventurousness of the music.  He suggests areas for improvement, or keys for interpretation.  It's a highly cerebral, left-brained approach.  And it's damned near useless when you're dealing with New Age music.   InnerZone, the latest collaboration between composer, producer, synthesist and multi–instrumentalist Steve Roach and Belgian ambient musician vidnaObmana, is music for contemplation, not music that you contemplate.  At first listen songs like "At the Edge of Everything" and "Cloud Space" are dreamy, airy, pleasant and forgettable.  "They don't really go anywhere" the critic complains.  

And then the Zen master smiles and asks "Where do you think they should go?"  

In most musical genres, the fourth wall is a given.  The listener hears the performance; he is not part of it.  InnerZone is a participatory experience.  Much as jazz uses standard melodies as a framework for improvisation and flights of fantasy, InnerZone is a framework for meditation and hypnogogic states.  From that viewpoint, InnerZone succeeds admirably.  The droning of Obmana's Fujara (a Hungarian flute which produces overtones reminiscent of Tibetan throat-singing) at various times evokes cicadas, oceans and barren desert landscapes.  Roach's electronic improvisations provide grounding in "Encounter Passage" and eerie staccato emphasis on "Isolation." There are many interesting time signatures and exotic drumbeats (particularly on "Strands" and "Isolation"), and enough dissonance to keep things from sliding into the dreaded "Yanni With Eyeliner" category. The music is unobtrusive; it is never unsubstantial.   Most of the bands on Projekt's roster have an immediately identifiable sound: tuneful, smooth, commercially friendly and intelligent if not groundbreaking.  Roach's ambient/New Age stylings fit well within this niche, while at the same time expanding its borders.  There's a fine line between developing a distinctive sound and becoming a cliché.  (Imagine a couple of guys with acoustic guitars singing badly about Aleister Crowley and the Illuminati.  I'll bet you know exactly what label released their latest CD.)  Roach's INNERZONE shows that Projekt's management is still on the right side of that line. - Kevin Filan

| 3.5 EYES | Innerzone marks the first time in a while that one of this duo's collaborations has not been a limited edition‚ release and has been made widely available. If you're familiar with their collaborations or solo work, you know they usually craft very personal releases, generally best listened to alone in the dark with headphones. This time around, the duo create an ethnic ambient trip that engulfs the listener, losing he or she in sublime audio textures and generating a world that‚s tough to share with others. I expect that the experience will be different for each person who listens. And while most of the compositions are lengthy, taking their time to build -- yet giving the listener a chance to escape through each mini excursion they create -- the song titles give the best and most accurate descriptions of the forcoming trips: "The Edge Of Everything," "Cloud Space," "Encounter Passage," "Isolation," and "Innerzone." Looking for a way to leave the world for a about an hour? Patric! - Edward Shimborske III

Now Leaving...Everything | Roach and Obmana last joined forces for 1999's Ascension of Shadows boxed set. Their new effort is a document of the enormous, shapeless space to be explored when melody and rhythm are abandoned. If you close your eyes and listen, you've floated halfway across the room by the time you open them. For its meditative power, this CD matches the most desolate moments of Lycia's A Day in the Stark Corner. It also touches on the "damnbient" style of A Murder of Angels. The track titles convey the mood: "At The Edge of Everything," "Cloud Space," "Isolation" and so on. With seven tracks totalling over 73 minutes, each piece has time to sink in and entice you to project your fears and questions into the soundscape. Obmana's Hungarian flute, the fujara, isn't so much an anchor as a buoy in the tide of Roach's electronics. Whether working together or separately, these guys dominate their niche in the Projekt universe. Once you've entered the InnerZone, you're on your own. - Scott Sweet