Robert Rich
Bestiary

THE REVIEW

"Bestiary" is one of the most experimental works within the extensive discography of Robert Rich. By effectively reducing or sometimes completely eliminating the organic traits, world-music elements, mystical tribalism, and dense ambient layers, the Californian artist this time focuses more on territorial landscapes, synthesizers, and their timbral side, coining a work that, although below his - very high - standards, still remains among the most hallucinatory and metaphysical, as well as one of the most interesting of a period, the 2000s, which gradually saw the artistic vein and the polish of the previous two decades diminish. 

In some ways reminiscent of the organisms of the more visionary Cluster, the work starts timidly with two not particularly successful episodes (the amorphous creatures shaped by the drones of "Mantis Intentions" and the simplistic world-music of "Nesting On Cliffsides" - reminiscent of Jon Hassell's 'fourth world' without either its evocative power or ancestral drum beats -) but it increasingly picks up, initially amplifying the mere synthetic experimentation (consider the convulsive "Dante's Anthropomorphic Zoo" or the vertiginous metallic delusions of "Sharpening Her Talons" where Rich intones harmonic phrases almost below the audible threshold over white noise buzzes, bell clangs, cavernous timpani, his now-famous 'glurps') and later the less immediate, psychic one, of which Rich is a recognized master. 

In terms of synthetic experimentation, Rich, fully following the dictates of the title and a sort of creature/machine binomial as old as the world but always effective, manipulates the oscillators of modular synths, regurgitating pyrotechnic mechanical tinkling that emulate the sounds of 'beasts': improbable flocks of birds on "Bestiary" (an electro-harmonic immersion worthy of Subotnick), disturbed waterfowl in the case of "Carapace Hides The Delicacy" (where he briefly returns to lap steel and tense organic progressions) or the barking of a dog (?) in "Folded Space" (an abstract piece still featuring the resonant drones of earlier works). 

The highest point is reached on "Premonition Of Circular Clouds", a surreal raga, with guest Forrest Fang on hichiriki weaving shrill contemplative interventions, and Rich on machines amid bursts of electronic magma and crumbling liquid percussions that seem conceived by the early Plastikman (!); after the creature develops, it is quickly attacked (and defaced) by an auto-tuned vocal delivering a mantric prayer that sometimes takes on crude tones, even though the requiem-like pathos it generates is as always highly evocative. 

And the psychic experimentation? Rich's ability to delve into the most diverse aspects of the emotional spectrum is as well-known as his undisputed mastery of the machines; rarely has the range moved so distinctly on indefinite, implausible forms of life... lands so distant and inhuman. With degrees in psychology and computer music: it shows.