| Artist: Robert Rich Album: Echo of Small Things Released: 10 May 2005 |  
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Robert Rich advises those listening to Echo of Small Things (61'14") that, "meaning waits at the periphery." Yet Rich, an endlessly versatile musician, has once again produced an album of Ambient Music worthy of cognitive engagement. If there is a story behind every work of music, the forward to Echo of Small Things would cover Rich's association with photographer David Agasi. Dark dreamers both, they posses a unique facility for creating distinctive atmospheric works of isolationism, environmental reverence and mournful beauty. Echo of Small Things is their first collaboration. If out of the mundane comes the profound, the magnification of nuance is each man's subtle achievement. As for the sonic half of this arrangement, Rich details a drifting soundscape of lovely drones, cloud-like flute tones, imaginative electronic modulations and field recordings, into a gradually unfolding examination of sound and mood. Any rhythmic element within this work is either too subtle or spaced too far apart to be recognized. Attentive listening reveals harmonious components floating above layers of simultaneous contrasts. The sliding voice of Rich's steel guitar as well as the muted shades of his ethereal flute both bring a melodic component to this otherwise textural piece. Equal parts intellectual structure and warming experience, this work is fulfilling to both the cerebral and the spiritual aspects of the mind. On Echo of Small Things, Rich compounds the unidentified interstitial moments which lie between the eventful.
- Chuck van Zyl/STAR'S END 8 June 2005 | |
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