Steve Roach has had a long and lauded career in the annals of contemporary ambient and space music. Many of his past albums have stood the test of time to become classics of the ambient genre. Wherever your tastes lie on the Roach spectrum--from kinetic Berlin School electronics to soft, breathing synth movements--he is an influential giant.

With this in mind, it becomes difficult to review Roach's newer ouevre. Much pressure is put on each new work to perform at classic release level, to continually create the next Dreamtime Return or Structures from Silence. Adding to this pressure is Roach's constant release schedule, often allowing four or five releases to appear from various labels in a single year. In the last few years there have been no shortage of Roach releases, and thus, somehow, each release is lessened in impact by the others. I had begun to fear that Roach was in danger of drowning out his own audience in a flood of good, but not earth-shattering, CDs.

Now, in 2003, we see the lauded release of Roach's newest work: Mystic Chords & Sacred Spaces. The last Steve Roach release I was completely bowled over by was Early Man, to my ears one of the finest examples of tribal ambient and pure spacemusic transcende d into a newer potent musical form. In the time since, we have seen quite a few more Roach releases--so many that some talked as if MC&SS would come and go quickly; moved aside by other, newer releases. It was then revealed that Mystic Chords would encompass four CDs (two of which would be available at retail outlets). Some opined that MC&SS would be Dreamtime Return for the new millennium, others were turned off by its sheer length or the promise of same-old-same-old Roach-ambient. And when the CD finally dropped into listeners' hands, opinion was divided as to whether it was Roach on autopilot, or the second coming of spacemusic.

It's tricky to review a music release that comes with such high expectations. After the flat and disappointing recent collaboration with Vidna Obmana, Innerzone, I approached MC&SS with special care to listen with ears not tainted by hasty judgments or preconceived notions of greatness. As it is, this review will only cover disc one--I am reserving my listens of the other three discs for when I have suitably digested each previous disc.

So, I come to the meat of the review. The self-titled disc one of Mystic Chords & Sacred Spaces is a fantastic CD, full of the sounds and atmospheres that make listening to Steve Roach a visceral, imaginative, spiritual, and exciting experience. Roach has taken the disparate threads of his most recent releases and blended them together to form a seamless, awe-inspiring tapestry of drone-instilled ambient. Listening to this album is like observing the galactic center rotate on its imaginary axis, it is like experiencing the universe as a being of oneness, it is inner space and outer space combined into a single musical geography.

If Steve Roach's musical output as a whole can be compared to continents on a planet--each continent containing separate but related wildlife, plantlife, topography, and geological attributes--we must then consider disc one to be the sound of the entire planet as a living breathing totality. Just by listening to disc one, I hear echoes of Ascension of Shadows on the track "Within the Mystic" and the familiar guitar experimentations of Streams and Currents on the track "Presence." This music has moved beyond the earthly, environmental morass of individual albums/continents and has elevated itself to the sum total of its parts.

Listeners may feel that MC&SS offers nothing new to the fray of ambient music. I disagree. While the sounds may be familiar to those who have followed Roach's career, he has taken his trademarked atmospheres and talents to produce an expanded vista of sonic beauty. I have not heard an expansive, concentrated dose of ambient drift of this caliber since The Magnificent Void. A common misconception regarding music of this type is that the music itself must somehow transport the listener to unknown realms of sonically-inspired experience. This is only half true. Mystic Chords can only take you there (wherever that "there" may be) if you allow it to. The CD is only 50 percent of the experience. Roach has provided the transportation; it is up to the listeners to depart off into the all-encompassing blackness.

I give this music my highest recommendation. I've listened to it for days on end, and am still discovering nuances I hadn't noticed before. Roach has provided us with a rich universe to explore; one that will withstand repeated visits. A welcome return to greatness from this modern master.

Available in its four CD version from both Steve Roach's site and gloom-emporium Projekt.

since July 15, 2003