Steve Roach
Dreamtime Return

The story of "Dreamtime Return", a super classic by Californian keyboardist Steve Roach, also extends through its discographic editions: released as a double album on vinyl in 1988 (one of the many doubles in his vast discography), it is reissued on CD with 38 minutes of extra music: two additional tracks, one, "Looking for Safety", which extends from 10 minutes in the original version to 31 in the revised one, and other tracks lengthened by a few minutes.

But this music is above all the inner chronicle of several journeys, made over the span of three years, from California to Northern Australia, reaching the Cape York Peninsula, the northernmost tip of the Australian continent, the homeland of the Aboriginals and their remote and ancient culture.

"Dreamtime Return", over two hours of relaxing music much closer to ambient than European-style electronic music, is, in its way, an instrumental concept album that takes its inspiration from the myths of the Australian Aboriginals: it is influenced by the Dreamtime, the distant era when celestial creatures descended to the barren land, shaped its forms, and populated it by transforming themselves into all the known species of plants and animals.

100,000 years of welfare and prosperity: until drought, between 10,000 and 20,000 years ago, marked the end of the Dreamtime. But the Aboriginals do not stop singing their cycles and practicing their rituals, as evidenced by the drawings on rock walls, so that up to today, the unconscious desire for the return to that idyllic time remains in men: Dreamtime Return.

Steve Roach sets these inspirations to music with his synthesizers, sequencers, and samplers, with the help of four guest musicians: the sound of tribal percussion and the didjeridu, the typical Aboriginal instrument made of eucalyptus wood, considered the oldest wind instrument of all time, is emphasized. The album also includes songs of the Aboriginals themselves, recorded by the explorer and ethnologist Percy Trezise, highlighted in the track "Red Twilight With The Old Ones".

In the liner notes, Steve Roach thanks a large number of people who inspired this work, providing us with the coordinates to understand its essence: among them, Harold Budd, Jon Hassell, Michael Shrieve: enough for you? However, "Dreamtime Return" is a pleasant and relaxing listen, a long sonic journey scratched by primitive percussion (as in "Songline" or "The Ancient Day") or lulled by slow waves of sound (in "A Circular Ceremony" or "The Other Side"): and it never ceases to fascinate.