Steve Roach - What Remains (2022)

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Steve Roach - What Remains (2022)

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What Remains is a dynamic confluence of sonic worlds — four interconnected passages that venture from analog-sequencer driven elegant futurism, to yearning and mysterious tribal ambient, to conclude with the heart-wrenching, pure-atmospherics of the title track. This sonic odyssey reveals a masterful culmination of the different electronic musics Roach has developed and explored over the last forty years.

Deep emotion, soulful longing and vast interweaves of sonic epiphanies of grace and beauty are immersed and nourished in a balance of darkness and light. The four distinct — yet allied — movements progress as one stylist space opens to the next, each emerging from the resonance of the previous piece.

What Remains is a powerful meditation upon Steve’s journey of one. “As I grow deeper into time,” Steve reflects, “my devotion to deeply engaging in this creative life progressively increases the potency to burn away that which is no longer needed. The shedding of old skins, patterns and perceptions have to be examined. What remains infuses the art with this essence. This transcendental state inherently evolves as one is tempered through the priorities of time. There are no boundaries around what I do. I venture to the place I feel in my imagination or discover while creating the music; it is how it wants to unfold. I desire to keep pushing further and deeper into places that are connected to what I’ve done while also pushing me into new worlds to explore. As an artist, I use these instruments with the agility to move between a lot of dynamic soundworlds. Like an actor, I inhabit different roles and disappear into them. That creative experience embodies all these incredible emotional, spiritual and psychological spaces as a daily meditation upon what remains vital.”

Sean Williams, New York Times best-selling author: “The final track, ‘What Remains’ is a great pay-off to what feels like a quartet of distinct answers to the question ‘What Remains?’ While the title doesn’t have a question mark, it’s easy to feel it in the music. Everything remains, and nothing. Consonance, and dissonance. At times driving, relentless, urgent, and at others: fractures, and healing. This closing track has a deep sense of lamentation and acceptance, of rolling time and final breaths, bringing the endless moment around full circle. This is classic Steve, really, my favourite kind of his music, with heavy, repeating chords holding court over bottomless depths of nuance. How he manages such perfect clarity with such dense reverberance, I don’t know — but I feel as though every momentary sound is caught and held forever, right up to the last tiny tintinnabulation.”