Robert Rich & Steve Roach
Strata

THE REVIEW

“The interest in existence lies almost entirely in the days when the dust of reality is mixed with magic sand” Marcel Proust

When the footprints in the snow draw strange hieroglyphs where we can read what we could have become, when the immaculate purring of a cat becomes the only cathedral where we can invoke our God, when the taste of a simple cookie takes us back to childhood where we can trace back our thread, when Rich's rhythmic micro-cosmos prepare sumptuous palettes where Roach's brushes can draw the necessary colors for his intimate shades.

Privileged moments that disappear in the blink of an eye, fleeting epiphanies that melt in the palm of a hand: for a moment, the dust of reality is blended with a kind of magic sand.

And then nothing more.

What remains is a groove, a vapor, a sense of loss, of emotion, of gratitude, of impossibility.

And then nothing more.

Or rather, we have “Strata”.

Roach's philosophy, his mysticism ranging from exoticism to esotericism, his lush and overflowing synths, his sinuous and yearning sequencers. A kind of magic sand that in “Strata” anchors to the ground.

Rich's organic attitude, the bustling of his micro-cellular worlds where electronic fragments propagate from a very precise center, the knitting of his watchmaker's tools under the magnifying glass of mathematical precision. A kind of granularity in constant evolution, a sort of dust, earthly dust that in “Strata” floats in the skies of the spirit.

Roach is held back by Rich and Rich is elevated by Roach.

And the album unfolds like a funambulist on the very thin line of a changing and nuanced ambient where sound core samples are in relentless search of some primordial truth.

Rich's percussion, winds, and chimes revive the embers of ritual bonfires, propitiate animist cults blessing imminent hunting trips and bathe with bronze reflections the rudimentary shields made by the first men on Earth.

Roach's stasis, his contemplations paint rock paintings on the walls of the psyche, marvel with tears in their eyes staring at the supreme mystery of the moon and merge into abstract magma that touches the charm of musique concrète.

A kind of environmental primitivism, an essentiality of colors, lines, and shapes that crystallize for a moment into vividly colored mándala, then dissolve and begin to float mid-air waiting for a subsequent sonic coagulation.

Rich and Roach, dust and sand, reality and magic…

… And I in the perpetual, futile, necessary search for lost time.