Mystic Chords & Sacred Spaces [Box set]

But wait... something is going on here, I thought. There is some real depth and texture to these drones, something memorable and substantive. This is no new age twaddle. This is pure sound hypnosis, like Eno used to do.

So, I keep going back. I fall asleep to this disc almost every night now. It has worked itself into my life. Something is going on with these discs that makes me want to listen all the time. I think there must be some buried messages or something.

With Mystic Chords & Sacred Spaces, Roach continues the discoveries and ruminations of Darkest Before Dawn by mixing consonance and dissonance in new and intriguing ways. The 15 compositions on this set, from "Palace of Nectar" to "Nameless" present what could only be described as "sonic landscapes" in the truest sense of the phrase, music which has neither a definable beginning or end, akin to being in a museum where one is viewing all of the details of a painting for several minutes then moving on to another painting without interruption. The first disc, titled Mystic Chords & Sacred Spaces, contains the brighter and more consonant music of the set, with the slowly-revolving "Oracle" bringing to mind some of the recent ambient music of David Parsons, notably the lighter moments of Parikrama and Maitreya. The darkest moment on the disc is "Within the Mystic", where Kathryn Gunziner's cello melds with Roach's reverb-drenched waves of chords in a dance of subdued passion...the beginning of the track is one of the most haunting moments in Roach's entire repertoire.

The hopefulness of Disc One is replaced by the pensiveness of Disc Two, titled Labyrinth. This is clearly the most significant disc in the set, perhaps one the most brillant examples of ambient electronica yet produced. Beginning with the Quiet Music-influenced "Wren and Raven", Roach takes us to the unsettling austerity of "The Otherworld" and "Wonderworld", pieces which combine the cosmic drama of The Magnificent Void with the metallic barreness of Darkest Before Dawn. After we cross this forbidding threshold, the listener enters the glistening and reassuring realm of "Dream Body", a state of mind which reappears on "Soulwave" and "Nameless" which concludes the disc.

For the past few years now, Roach has produced a series of works that may signal the end of his Dreamtime Return-influenced, techno-tribal works of the past decade. Mystic Chords is the strongest example yet of what could be a re-examination of the possibilities inherent in ambient electronica for many years to come.

(Note: Keep in mind that Part Two of this set is only available through Roach's website [www.steveroach.com] and Projekt Records)