Steve Roach: The Sky Opens
Projekt Records

It might seem a bit of a stretch to call The Sky Opens a high-water mark in Steve Roach's career when the ambient-electronic musician has produced a discography of staggering proportions (nearly 200 releases, apparently) since his first release in 1982. Yet there are things about this new set, certainly an indispensable one for Roach devotees, that distinguish it from others in his catalogue. There's the matter of scope, for starters: a double-CD set, the recording is 140 minutes long, and stylistically the material extends from sequencer-driven tribal-ambient epics to deeply atmospheric meditations. Something that lends it even more resonance, however, has to do with the circumstances of the recording: The Sky Opens documents in full a live concert Roach presented on August 30, 2019 at the First United Methodist Church of Pasadena, California in front of 1200 listeners. Enhancing the sound presentation is the fact that microphones were placed in multiple locations within the church to capture the music in all its dimensionality.

Adding to the appeal for Roach fans is a set-list that augments classic material from Structures from Silence and Dreamtime Forever with a disc's worth of brand new material. Opening the release is “Structures from Silence,” first heard on the album of the same name in 1984. A stunning intro to the concert, the music presents ten lulling minutes of time-suspending beauty. Long washes of high and low pitches unfurl in majestic counterpoint, the combination evoking the imagined impression of serenity-inducing realms far removed from our own. As calming, if a tad more mystery-laden, is “Mercurius Presence,” though in this case the sound design shifts from silken washes to synth timbres reminiscent of Eno during his Music for Films period. Different timbres distance “The Mystic Within” from the two before it, with reverb-soaked acoustic piano now appearing alongside a slow-motion synthetic swirl.

As would be expected, the sequencing of the selections follows a discernible trajectory, moving as it does from inaugurating ambient meditations to high-energy material. The transition from “The Mystic Within” to “The Sky Opens” signals the first major change when chiming patterns bring high-velocity drive to the latter. Flowing even more rapidly is the first CD's closer, “Merge Infinite,” a half-hour-long colossus that presumably brought the concert's first half to a close. With expansive synth washes draping themselves across endlessly charging sequencer-driven patterns, lovers of Tangerine Dream's Phaedra might feel like they've died and gone to heaven as Roach's epic plays out. Much like the title track of the German trio's 1974 album, “Merge Infinite” advances through multiple episodes, with each section emerging organically out of the one before it.

“The Continent” initiates the second half with eight plodding minutes of tribal drums drenched in synth washes, after which “Songline” plunges deeply into a tribal-ambient zone by combining ceremonial drums with didgeridoo. Midway through the second half, “Magnificent Gallery” reinstates the character of the concert's opening tracks for four rest-inducing minutes, before the slow, trance-like tempo of “Circular Ceremony” and the tribal-ambient evocation “Looking for Safety” create the impression of a long journey winding down. As credible as the content is on the second CD, the material on the first gives it a conspicuous edge.

One of the more interesting things about the recording is that, for this listener at least, an absorbing meditation such as “Structures from Silence” leaves a stronger impression than a full-scale epic like “Merge Infinite,” even if there's no questioning the intoxicating dazzle of the latter. Being a concert recording, occasional intrusions of location-based noise occur, but they're not disconcerting; instead, they rather pleasingly remind us that the material we're hearing was birthed in front of a rapt audience; as satisfying as a recording is when created at Roach's Arizona-based Timeroom studio, knowing that material on The Sky Opens emerged live in real time lends the recording an extra level of immediacy. It's also refreshing that crowd noise is absent, one possible explanation for it being that the Roach fanatics who joined him that August evening entered into a collective state of deep entrancement the moment “Structures from Silence” began flooding the space. I wouldn't be at all surprised if those same attendees will look back on the concert as one of the peak experiences, musical or otherwise, of their lives.

April 2020