Dynamic Stillness
by Matt Rowe, MusicTAP
May 2009

There is something musically beautiful and utterly captivating within the two discs that make up the latest release in Steve Roach's vast ambient catalogue. DYNAMIC STILLNESS is best characterized as being sounds of a lone location where emptiness abounds in a very powerful, but immensely beautiful way. As the music progresses from piece to piece, they change to reflect the completeness of this genesis as it comes alive.

The album begins with a 40+-minute work called "Birth of Still Places". It starts with a noised stillness that is full of an unimagined power. It progresses to uncover simple melodies sounding much like Roger Eno's miraculous ambient masterpiece, Voices. They are small installments of echoed and ghostly shards of sound that express nothing short of grandeur in birth; something great in the act of becoming.

But what makes DYNAMIC STILLNESS an ambient force is that it doesn't stop at the already magnificent extended first track. You are awarded seven more pieces that combine with "Birth of Still Places" to further accentuate the audio journey that this album will guide you in. All speak of the same power and grace that lies just within our consciousness. This birthing element, when woven into a story that your mind will supply you with, can be a soothing elixir of sound that will energize your spirit.

Just close your eyes and slip into a new world of peace and strength supplied by the talent of Steve Roach, one of our treasured ambient greats.


Dynamic Stillness

CD  $18.99 
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Dynamic Stillness
Steve Roach
2009 Projekt PRO228 (CD) – 2-CD
Reviewed by Echoes Radio, Guts Of Darkness, MusicTAP, Sonic Curiosity

DYNAMIC STILLNESS is a vast new work that has progressed over the past three years, evolving in its own time alongside the many other releases that were created and released during this period. The opening for these pieces was accessed through long periods of solitude at Steve's high desert studio and beyond. This environment was essential for informing the inner breath of this work and revealing a mastery within the art of original sound creation, bold harmonic structures, silence and sonic space. DYNAMIC STILLNESS reaches into a realm of amorphous soundworlds filled with a sense of unresolved expansion and mystery, blooming into cloudlike form.

"A moving meditation on the quiet power inherent in vast spaces. Roach has come back around to the slow-motion terraforming of soundworlds that seem to go on forever, pulling skeins of light through layers of cloud to describe gorgeous imaginary landscapes. Reminiscent of the sighing, beatless drifts of THE DREAM CIRCLE and THE MAGNIFICENT VOID in its blend of soul-surrounding calm edged with dramatic tension, DYNAMIC STILLNESS is Roach at his contemplative best, a sure and silent guide coaxing us to follow him into the endless realms inside ourselves." -- John Shanahan, Hypnagogue

"Mysteriously beautiful, ambient electronic waveforms bridging panorama and parsec. The singularities guiding Roach's hand are now unquestionable -- this is breathtaking stuff." -- Darren Bergstein

"DYNAMIC STILLNESS presents ambient-electronic pioneer Steve Roach in the deep end of the pure atmospheric, rhythmless soundscape genre. Across the 2-CD release, amorphous shifting sonics glide in a phenomenal flow, highly cohesive and yet ever-changing. Dynamic stillness indeed! These eight long-form tracks (140 minutes in all) undulate softly and slowly, radiating light even as darkness hovers along the edges. It's an album of subtle pieces, more often than not with emphasis on the stillness as opposed to the dynamics. Disc two's closing 'Canyon Stillness' plays like a dark inversion of STRUCTURES FROM SILENCE. A cold breeze blows through it all like a black mist. After so much softness it makes for a surprisingly chilling, engaging finish." -- Phil Derby, Electroambient Space
 
Disc 1
1. Birth of Still PlacesMP340:28 
2. Long TideMP319:41 
3. A Darker LightMP37:34 
4. Opening SkyMP35:06 
Disc 2
1. Nature of ThingsMP38:50 
2. Further InsideMP316:58 
3. Slowly RevealedMP323:55 
4. Canyon StillnessMP323:17 


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