Welcome to a special edition of New at Magnatune, featuring the work of seminal ambient artist and world-class multi-instrumentalist Robert Rich.
With over two dozen albums to his name, Robert Rich has helped define and
even create many of the various genres and sub-genres in which he's
worked, yet his music remains marvelously difficult to categorize. Seven
of his albums are presented here in chronological order, including many
that are nearly impossible to find in print. Two albums by Amoeba Rich's
side project with Rick Davies are included as well.
Robert Rich - Trances/Drones (1994)
http://magnatune.com/artists/albums/rrich-trances1 (CD1: Trances)
http://magnatune.com/artists/albums/rrich-trances2 (CD2: Drones)
On this essential album Robert Rich reprises the 'sleep concert' format
that made him famous, so the music is both wonderfully relaxing and perpetually fascinating. There's a lot going on in this material, layer
after layer of swirling textures and tones. It's so mesmerizing, in fact,
that you'll find yourself startled if one of the pieces is interrupted
prematurely: Rich has a talent for finding the mind's natural rhythms,
which means that the music naturally steers you toward a mysterious and
deeply satisfying state of equilibrium.
Robert Rich - Below Zero (1998)
http://magnatune.com/artists/albums/rrich-below
One of Rich's best albums and an amazing one in which to get lost, Below
Zero is darker than some of his other works and has a vast sense of
scale, there are massive surrealist soundscapes, clouds of shifting
metallic overtones, and sinuous sound threads running throughout. It also
represents a significant technical achievement; Rich's sound design
includes phase vocoding and granular synthesis, as well as open-loop
feedback networks, and chaotic electro-acoustic systems. Somehow all this
technology and melancholy come together to create an intense beauty that
permeates Rich's singular sonic universe. Really, there are few albums
that approach this level.
Robert Rich - Bestiary (2001)
http://magnatune.com/artists/albums/rrich-bestiary
Medieval bestiaries depicted strange and mysterious creatures, allegories
from distant new lands filled with wonders. This musical bestiary maps a
perplexing mindscape, shape-shifting organisms are created in sound. Like
the liquid forms that populate the paintings of Yves Tanguy or Joan Miro,
each sonic creature on this album takes on the qualities of a living
thing; yet each is also ultimately ephemeral. Rhythmic, energetic,
bizarre, and very glurpy, Bestiary gets its amazing mutated electronic
textures from the MOTM analog modular synthesizer and Rich's generally
superlative sound design. It's also peppered with twisted contributions
from Forrest Fang, Andrew McGowan, and Haroun Serang.
Robert Rich - Temple of the Invisible (2003)
http://magnatune.com/artists/albums/rrich-temple
Temple of the Invisible finds Robert Rich at his most organic, eschewing
the trappings of modernity or stylistic boundaries. Using only simple
acoustic instruments, Rich crafts a document from a distant time and
place, a lost culture with musical underpinnings that reach from Java to
North Africa, from Medieval Europe to the Tibetan Plateau. 'A music-scape
that oozes with primitive life, as if pulsing from the swamp itself. A
time traveller searching for the aperture that looks back to Eden.' San
Francisco Chronicle
Robert Rich - Calling Down The Sky (2004)
http://magnatune.com/artists/albums/rrich-calling
This 74 minute live recording features an entirely improvised concert in
Denver, Colorado that took place on Saturday July 26, 2003 in front of an
intimate audience that came prepared for anything. With a thunderstorm
forming outside and breaking to a peak in mid-concert, Rich's
improvisation directly refers to the weather. Broodingly beautiful,
electric, alive.
Robert Rich - Open Window (2004)
http://magnatune.com/artists/albums/rrich-open
While better known for his electronic textures, Robert Rich often includes
piano solos during his live concerts, and Open Window documents his
improvisational approach to acoustic piano, with influences ranging from
Alan Hovhannes and Erik Satie to Terry Riley and Keith Jarrett. Rich
recorded Open Window on his own 1925 vintage A.B. Chase baby grand, an
instrument with a more intimate sound than a full-size concert piano. Over
a period of two months, he kept a daily schedule of piano improvisation,
with microphones set up to record at all times. The pieces selected here
reflect special moments during this concentrated period. These were the
moments when effort vanished, and the music seemed to write itself.
Robert Rich - Echo of Small Things (2005)
http://magnatune.com/artists/albums/rrich-echo
'Echo of Small Things takes Rich's talent for crafting evocative
atmospheric ambient tone poems to an almost dizzying level. The
integration of assorted environmental sounds someone walking, the happy
gurgling of a baby, nocturnal creatures, rain, wind and thunder--with
constantly evolving layers of assorted electro organic musical elements is
so flawless, so perfect, and so involving that I always found myself
entirely absorbed in the recording.' Wind and Wire
Amoeba - Watchful (1997)
http://magnatune.com/artists/albums/amoeba-watchful
Alternative Press: rated 5/5 - Essential: 'Sounding vaguely like Robert
Wyatt on Valium: music for life-weary somnambulists. Embracing the
meloncholy that lingers just beyond the thin veil of hope, the songs on
Watchful linger in the netherworld of sinking memory and damaged dreams.
This is a superb and unusual album that mesmerizes and engulfs.' - Alternative
Press
Amoeba - Pivot (2000)
http://magnatune.com/artists/albums/amoeba-pivot
Featuring offbeat and existential vocals by Rich, Pivot surrounds its
voices with Rich's signature deep textures and atmospheres, but has more
of an art rock sensibility than Amoeba's previous work. Davies' guitar
riffs have nice timbres. The guest performers are Don Swanson, Andre
McGowan, Hans Christian, BobDog Collins, Forrest Fang, and Tom Heasley.
