Steve Roach - Dynamic Stillness (CD)

Release Date: 05/05/09

Roach at his contemplative best, a sure guide coaxing us to follow him into the endless realms inside ourselves.

Dynamic Stillnessis a vast work that developed over a three year period, evolving in its own time alongside the many other releases Steve created at that time. These eight tracks reach into a realm of amorphous soundworlds filled with a sense of unresolved expansion and mystery, blooming into cloud-like form. The opening for these pieces was accessed through long periods of solitude at Steve’s high desert studio and beyond. This environment was essential for informing the inner breath of this work, revealing a mastery within the art of original sound creation, bold harmonic structures, silence and sonic space.

Hypnagogue “A moving meditation on the quiet power inherent in vast spaces. Roach has come back around to the slow-motion terraforming of soundworlds that seem to go on forever, pulling skeins of light through layers of cloud to describe gorgeous imaginary landscapes. Dynamic Stillnessis Roach at his contemplative best, a sure and silent guide coaxing us to follow him into the endless realms inside ourselves.” -John Shanahan

Electroambient Space “Dynamic Stillness presents ambient-electronic pioneer Steve Roach in the deep end of the pure atmospheric, rhythmless soundscape genre. Across the 2CD release, amorphous shifting sonics glide in a phenomenal flow, highly cohesive and yet ever-changing. Dynamic Stillness indeed! These eight long-form tracks (140 minutes in all) undulate softly and slowly, radiating light even as darkness hovers along the edges. It’s an album of subtle pieces, more often than not with emphasis on the stillness as opposed to the dynamics. Disc two’s closing ‘Canyon Stillness’ plays like a dark inversion of Structures From Silence. A cold breeze blows through it all like a black mist. After so much softness it makes for a surprisingly chilling, engaging finish.”

2CD in 6-panel digipak.