| Artist: Steve Roach Album: Landmass Released: July 2008 |   |
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Over the years STAR'S END has hosted many live in-studio on-air concerts, usually with artists fresh from The Gatherings Concert Series stage. Having played to a sold-out house earlier at The Gatherings, Steve Roach embarked on the second leg of the aforementioned music marathon on the 05.20.07 broadcast of STAR'S END. The radio concert began pretty much in the same zone as where the public performance left off. But playing on STAR'S END is meant to open up a space for discovery, and Roach turned from music for The Gatherings community to atmospheres for an audience each in their own dream space. From this two-hour excursion Roach has culled the CD Landmass (67'51"). With its six distinctive phases, the album ingeniously moves from skipping synth patterns and icy tone clusters into echoing sequencer runs and a palpable sense of propulsion. A different kind of motion is present in the slower textural sections as sounds move in waves - more like on the ocean than through the air. There is an interesting energy arcing through this work. The act of playing a second more private concert after a public event often provides a sense of summation to a powerful experience. But the live music played on STAR'S END is more than a beautiful artifact of a big Philadelphia weekend. Descending into himself Roach realized this music completely in the moment, and listening to Landmass one gets a sense of the vastness of the eternal now.
- Chuck van Zyl/STAR'S END 24 July 2008 | |
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