Lightness of Being [4:56] Living the Dream [16:56] Sundial [9:27] Sands of Time [15:03] Destination Horizon [27:12]

product info

Track 3, 4. with Paul Ellis. A chronicle of new and classic unreleased pure electronic sequencer-driven pieces filled with beauty and emotion. Spiraling melodic sequences, floating majestic textures along with thematic and melodic contributions from guest synthesist Paul Ellis all add up to a set of music that is filled with optimism and passion from start to conclusion. 2003. Press information

review

LIFE SEQUENCE is a chronicle of new and personally significant unreleased pieces. Since the release of CORE and my recent purely atmospheric projects, I felt the growing urge to re-visit my electronic "roots" in analog sequencer-style music. The fact that I had moved away from this sound for awhile made reconnecting with it much like finding an old friend inside myself. While the pieces presented here were recorded over a fifteen year period, they share a similar feeling: that of embracing life's movement toward the unknown with excitement and anticipation. The first two pieces described below were created during especially significant moments of transition in my own life's sequence. "Destination Horizon" was originally recorded live for the first Echoes Living Room Concert series in 1988. It was also the last piece created at The Timeroom in Venice, California, just before leaving for a second trip to Australia and returning to a new life in Tucson, Arizona. "Living the Dream" was recorded live in the Tucson Timeroom just before leaving the U.S. for my first European tour in 1991. "Sands of Time" and "Sundial" are recent collaborations with electronic artist Paul Ellis. These pieces grew out of our live rehearsal sessions for a 2002 Portland concert. His appreciation of this style of music and my earlier work in this direction was an inspiration. The opening track, "Lightness of Being" created in 2003, holds for me an unbroken feeling connected to the early impulses that drew me to a form of music I still feel close to my heart. 2003. Steve Roach

review

As Steve states in the cd-booklet, this album chronicles 5 unreleased pieces which re-visit his roots in analog sequencer style music. We nicely take off with “Lightness of Being”, a bubbling soundscape with swirling fractal groove samples. Next we enter “Living the Dream”, a track which takes us back to the period of Dreamtime Return: a slowly building arc of textures featuring minimalistic moulded sustaining sequencer patterns. The 3rd track “Sundial” is one of two tracks which Steve made with Paul Ellis in 2002. It’s a rather “light” sounding piece of music, swirling rhythm & sequencer leading the way with a blanket of transparency on top. Steve and Paul also composed the 4th track “Sands of Time”, in which I felt in the first part that it takes quite a while before things start to move. I think this 15-minute track suffers a bit of both direction and content, although in the last few minutes things start evolving to something. Life Sequence concludes with the full, unedited 27-minute version of Destination Horizon, which some will know in shorter format from the Echo-sampler A Door in the Air of 1991. All in all, this disc gives a nice overview of music that -sadly & for whatever reason- remained on the shelf, but now is available for full exposure to the ambient-audience. 2003. Bert Strolenberg / The Netherlands

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I have bought far too many cd's this month :-) but anyone who likes cosmic drifting melodic sequencer music MUST be order go and buy Steve Roach - Life Sequence it is absolutely fantastic. I have only played it properly once but it is just amazing. If you liked Dreamtime Return, Empetus, orThe Leaving Time you'll love this 2003. Mat Mckenzie

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Long-time Steve Roach fans know that the artist's roots lay in Berlin school EM (before he migrated into his more recognizable drifting ambient persona). Life Sequence is both a glance back and a glimpse forward from the "good old days." The dual nature of the album is because of the time span during which these songs were recorded; "Destination Horizon" (1988) and "Living the Dream" (1991) are older, while the other three pieces ("Sands of Time", "Sundial" and "Lightness of Being") are all recently composed works. The selection run from the short (under five minute long) "Lightness of Being" to the epic "Destination Horizon" (clocking in at twenty-seven plus minutes). I found Life Sequence to be a refreshing mixture of cutting edge Berlin-hybrid music (the opening hyperkinetic sequencer-meets-fractal groove of "Lightness of Being") with more atmospheric pieces, such as the wonderfully moody "Living the Dream". "Living…" layers sinister but warm cushions of synthesizers underneath twinkling sequenced notes in a slowly unwinding and steadily evolving soundscape. Even though this piece was recorded in 1991, it sounds vibrant and fresh. The juxtaposition of the languid undercurrent of synth washes counterpoints the percolating sequences making this a unique exercise in Berlin school music. "Sundial" and "Sands of Time" are two recent collaborative efforts with Portland-based EM artist Paul Ellis. "Sundial" offers rapidly pulsing fractal/sequenced beats against a backdrop of assorted melodic textures, including what sounds like forlorn electric guitar and harp arpeggios. This is highly atmospheric music owing to the dense echo effect applied to the various melodic sounds. Darker drone-like shadings commingle with the beats and washes later on in the track. "Sands of Time" opens in classic Roach spacemusic fashion, with a long drawn out synthesizer washes, warmer than his usual noir-ish drones. The rhythmic elements in this song emerge very slowly, almost as if they were walking towards you from a great distance. When the sequences do overtake the piece, they do so amidst a flurry of jingly-jangly effects and thumping bass beats, but even so, this is not really a high energy number, being more atmospheric than overpowering in its intensity. Late in the track, things get spacy and trippy with elaborate pulsing cyber-ambient-EM noises and tones coming and going like micro-impulses coursing through a circuit board. Trying to describe a single twenty-seven minute track is a Herculean task so suffice it to say that "Destination Horizon" is a winner, once again combining spacemusic textures and melodic soundworlds with sequenced rhythms and notes and other elements of Berlin EM musicality. The music is vibrant, exciting, and invigorating yet also beautifully subdued in tone and never so thunderous or powerful as to detract from the flowing vibe that seems to permeate it throughout the entirety of its duration. At times, I was reminded of Robert Rich's Geometry, since he also combined a strong EM feel with warmer more "human" tonalities. Whether you will find twenty-seven unending minutes of this to be too much of a good thing will be a matter of personal preference. I seldom found myself tiring of it, though. For those who have never experienced anything but the Steve Roach's deep dark ambience or his primal tribal soundscapes, Life Sequence will be a revelation (provided they like Berlin school music, of course). Life Sequence reveals that Roach deserves the accolades that are frequently laid at his feet. He is a special artist of uncommon talent encompassing a spectrum of musical styles. This CD gets a "highly recommended" from yours truly. 2004. Bill Binkelman / Wind & Wire

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On "Life Sequence", recorded in 2003, the third song is "Sun Dial", which is with Paul Ellis, if I remember right. I love that particular one. It gets moving and just keeps going. Pure "jump-for-joy goodness for me.. This new one holds some of that same sense of movement, energy and pure kinetic joy. I'll be listening to this one a lot, in between all of the wonderful British EM I'm so fond of. 2007. Tom Rigler

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Life Sequence (73'37") stands in stark relief against the transcendent depths of Steve Roach's more atmospheric/textural works. The music found on this collection is designed to propel the listener endlessly through a trackless void, creating our own space as we fly. The music is searching, tremulous and expectant while being enigmatic, limitless and empyreal - at once personal and universal. Life Sequence groups together five studio tracks from significantly different points along the arc of Roach's eminent career in electronic music. What ties this album together is not just the hardware, the analog style step sequencer and its seemingly endless facility for composition, repetition and variation; but the fidelity and expanse of these realizations. We are entranced through Roach's crisscrossing of fractured rhythms and blip patterns, enthralled at the interplay of complex layering and multifaceted patterns and entangled in the kaleidoscopic mutations of the music's pulse. The beauty of these works comes from its many strands, heard individually and comprehended collectively - in the way we come to admire a large tapestry from a swatch of its fabric. Life Sequence is an album of tomorrow's music masquerading as yesterday's rage. Here Roach renders into musical form his concept of rhythmic unity and timeless space. In spite of Roach's music having been borrowed from so many times, this vital artist still has the power to inspire and move. 2003. Chuck van Zyl / Star's End