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Travelers' Cloth (64'40") finds Robert Rich again discovering, and then following possibilities. Out of an intense creative ferment come nine novel nomadic tracks. Evoking mental pictures, Rich's is a mind music which enters always through the heart. Executed using the seasoned skill his audience has come to appreciate, he transforms the natural emanations of flute, piano and guitar into something else, something foreign, something more ethereal. Once surrendering to these quietly captivating formations we may feel their beauty and glow. Wherever synthetic sonorities surround groupings of acoustic sounds and instruments, we cross into the land within the artist. Further away, the motive power of trekking drums provides a propulsive, finely detailed drift into myth. As digital samples mix with percussion, and a glissando guitar glides across notes, synthesizer tones respire beneath a distant, heaving atmosphere. The listener, now traveler, dreams over the great distance of imagination, to rest upon timeless textures of timbre. Our thoughts follow this music into a welcoming aural realm of ideas - reprieved briefly from the life sentence of a grinding world. Rendered as a euphoric, many-splendored journey of fleeting moments and sonic pleasures, Travelers' Cloth revels in the flowing motion associated with living things. Robert Rich's music has life, has unique and subjective focus, concept, context and point of view. Made in the age of machines, yet fully human, there is plenty here for us to treasure.
- Chuck van Zyl/STAR'S END 4 May 2023 |
