The double album “Back to Life”, presented in a beautiful designed 6-panel digipak, is a culmination of sonic events adressing a fantastic range of ambient landscapes and forms. Again hitting the 70-minute duration on both discs, Steve’s in-depth spherical creations bring a sense of magic and comfort, but they are also recycling light, shadows along many elements known from his previous releases. It’s still smooth pulsating and highly minimal soundscaping with a excellent spacious sound design along a magical veil draped over it. On the other hand, “Back to Life” also left me with the feeling if things have significantly evolved in a satisfactory manner: almost all featured music of the seven tracks on disc 1 realm heavily in “Mystic Chords” territory (a release that dates back to 2003). Disc two presents the lenghty “Mist of Perception”, where the arc of immersive music offers better dynamic undercurrents and intensity culminating in a nice assortment of cosmic, otherworldly and in-depth textural landscapes that work well in infinite playback mode. Due to the previously mentioned reasons, “Back to Life” in my opinion is not an essential recording in the Roach-discography of vast, mythic and imaginative soundscapes. Although the album was already digitally released at the end of 2011, the physical release is due for April 10, 2012. |
Website: www.steveroach.com
You can see what reviews I have done of this artist on the Steve Roach artist page
Sonic Immersion © 2024 |