Steve Roach - Streams & Currents (CD)

Release Date: 01/22/02

In his own silent way, Steve Roach has created the perfect atmosphere for contemplation and dreaming with eyes open.

Utilizing the guitar as a painterly tool, Steve’s continuing evolution of atmospheric processed guitar-based zones provides an evocative complement to his many influential albums of synth-based soundworlds. Full of nuance and subtlety, built from webs of melody and pure texture,Streams & Currentsis imbued with an ephemeral quality that seems to linger at the edge of conscious perceptions, creating an introspective, enveloping flow of mood-altering pieces. The album progresses to deeper, darker and warmer zones, growing quiet in a way that is beautifully chilling in its nearly submerged ending. The mercurial ebb and flow creates a sanctuary that is rarely found in today’s music. In his own silent way, Steve Roach has created the perfect atmosphere for contemplation and dreaming with eyes open.

Steve Roach on the album:

Streams & Currentsis the result of a steady flow of deeply inspired late night sessions between late August and Mid-September 2001. Of my pieces, I feel these are perhaps the most intimate and directly expressive of ‘being in the present moment.’ A sense of quiet seems to engulf the tracks progressively; it is something I have never quite captured before in this way.

If there is a theme to be found, it’s about working from an instinctual place – starting from an empty slate state of mind. These pieces began like the zones onMidnight Moon, in a relaxed and introspective state with everything recorded live in the moment. Almost every night, the need to engulf myself in this deep-quiet warm blanket of sound became a temporary obsession that soon filled over seven recorded hours. Instrumentation consists of two electric guitars, (Stratocaster and Baritone Guitar), Ebow, extensive live looping and sound processing gear along with mantra beat on one piece. Streams & Currentswas also about focusing on minimal-essential technology to bring out the maximum opportunity for subdued emotive expression.

CD in jewel box.