Review. ROBERT RICH. What we left behind (2016)

Some facts and words from the Master, Robert Rich.

What we left behind is released by Soundscape Productions. It's quite long and concept, so You can take Your time meditating while the Artist guides us through the jungle of jungles, city of cities, Minoan labyrinth of labyrinths, where a man is lost. Forever?

The album gives us questions which already are the answers, but don't You hurry up. There are no straighforward answers, the album is very sophisticated (as always, it's Robert Rich). The Music speaks louder than ever: lost are we.

I can't choose my favourite track, so here they are, all in one symphony which starts from wilder one and mildly goes into the second one and so on... I travel... I dream and want to be awake as this Music is for those who understand that we MUST be awake. NOW is the time, and it's not an old saying. It's the terrible truth told with beautiful Music.

Transpiration is one of those which are alchemy.

The coda of the album, Meeting Face To Face, is so silent and calm... End in silence... As everything that is ruined finally achieves happiness in a dream.

1.     Profligate Earth                6:22        

2.    Raku                        5:13    

3.    Voice of Rust                5:41    

4.    Soft Rains Fall                4:17    

5.    Rhizome                    2:01    

6.    Transpiration                5:17    

7.    Corvid Collections            6:32    

8.    Aerial On Warm Seas            9:08    

9.    Never Hunger                3:22    

10.    After Us                    3:02    

11.     What We Left Behind            6:01    

12.    Meeting Face To Face            5:29    
    
Total Time:  62:24

I dreamt of the earth after us,
As mountains erode and time helps the cities crumble.
So easy to think that the earth revolves around us,
That after us, the planet stops.
We who can change the weather.

When we make our world so inhospitable we can’t survive,
Life crawls blindly forward,
Consciousness revives, organisms organize.
Cells of the earth join together to create new minds.

Small lives build new worlds,
Cast a net across the surface and through layers below,
Constant construction, destruction, erosion, rebuilding.
After us, on a scaffolding of rust and ashes, salt and sand,

Digesting through it, stumbling numbly,
Vagabond life picks through the detritus and continues unconcerned.
Profligate Earth pays no mind to the foibles of her creation.
She scatters choices for those who can still choose.

These are the words of the Artist.

The album was recorded in 2014-2016 by Robert Rich at Soundscape, Mountain View CA. Mixed and mastered by Robert Rich at Soundscape in 2016. Abstractions of Forrest Fang’s cümbüs on #8 and #9. Abstractions of Chari Chuang’s voice on #1. All crows were compensated for their participation.

Instruments: prepared piano, Haken Continuum, PVC flutes, lap steel guitar, percussion, DSI Prophet 12 and 6, Korg Wavestation and M3, eowave Resonator, MOTM and Eurorack modulars.

Thanks for assistance from Paul Schreiber, Dave Smith Instruments, Ed Eagan & Lippold Haken, Chuck at Noise Bug, Old Crow, Intellijel, 2C, Izotope, STG, Audio Damage and many others; plus of course Dixie and all of you who listen.  

Cover art by Romanie Sanchez (www.romanie.net). “WhaleBird” (©2014) “Flower in my Desert” (©2011) “Autoflora” (©2011). Design and Layout by John Bergin.

Robert Rich has helped define ambient and electronic music, with over 40 albums across four decades. Rich began building his own analog modular synthesizers in 1976, when he was 13, and later studied computer music at Stanford's CCRMA while researching lucid dreaming. Rich performs and lectures worldwide. His all-night Sleep Concerts have become legendary.

More at http://robertrich.com.

Interview with Robert Rich.