Steve Roach beckons with the promise of fantastic escape. A meditation on fugitive beauty his What Remains (70'22") glows with an air of cosmic yearning. Subtlety has always been one of Roach's strengths, and the four tracks here are so well-stated and precise that their complexity seems to come quite easily.
This music, while made with machines, has been made for humans. Succinct and eminently re-playable What Remains drifts from moods of exuberance and wonder, to nocturnal befogged views and synth soft poetic power. Breathing his tetrad of realizations into our imagination, one by one Roach engulfs the listener in a sonorous minor-key semblance of ambience.
Shifting to a spectral plane handsome and imposing drones give way to a simmering groove. As electronic percussion moves under, over and through adjacent sounds the mind may sense a polyrhythmic texture. Only hinting at its ethno-origins this energy feels forged deep beneath some indefinite surface.
Slightly cloudy, reverberant synthesizer chords give way to echoing sequencer patterns. As the resulting restless energy, space and time are strikingly transformed, Roach is found to be pulling from different emotional poles. In the gathering gloom a collage of sounds - free-floating, rounded metal edged, linked within cavernous reverb - emerge from roiling digital effects. The slow burning closing piece erases all bearings, leading us back into the silent now.
Throughout What Remains Roach's quiet compositions of connection and reflection gently articulate an intense well of feelings behind even the simplest gesture. United by the sense of discovery which may be felt by informed listeners he continues to re-imagine the potential of his music. Yet, no matter how far it is pushed, or how hard it is played, it never forgets the abiding creative energy that first put it into motion.
Chuck van Zyl/STAR'S END - 4 August 2022
