Post Description

Steve Roach's Quiet Music project began with a series of early-'80s recordings commissioned by healing-arts programs and later used for everything from personal meditation to birthing music. A single-CD edition was finally released in 1988, and a few cassette-only follow-ups came later. This double-disc reissue collects the original Quiet Music and adds material from Quiet Music 3 and the cassette edition of Quiet Music 1. The music pairs Roach's sparse, textural synthesizer along with understated percussion and flute stylings.

Now after years of requests, the remaining cassette-only releases of QUIET MUSIC have been collected and remastered on CD to join the original single CD first released in 1988. These recordings from the early 80's were originally commissioned for several healing arts programs. The early strands of Steve's synthesizer paintings are joined with melodic flute and sounds from the high desert blended in an understated serene atmosphere. The pure peaceful, non-threatening nature of this music was soon discovered for use in meditation, birthing and Hospice programs and continues to find its use in this way today. This early chapter in Ambient Music is presented as a double CD on Fortuna Records. Disc One is the original QUIET MUSIC CD with the sand dunes cover. Disc Two is side one of the QUIET MUSIC 1 cassette, side two of the QUIET MUSIC 3 cassette and a shorter piece that ended the original QUIET MUSIC 3.

About original tapes:
Steve Roach created four albums devoted to quiet and silence early in his solo career. The first release was Structures From Silence in 1984. (He has since remastered and reissued it.) He recorded a series, Quiet Music, from 1983 through 1986. Quiet Music, Vol. 1 is the first cassette and it is beautiful, serene music. Roach surrounds nature samples with very melodic, almost symphonic synth atmospheres and bright drones. This is pastoral ambience at its finest. While Roach has gone a different direction in the late '90s and the new millennium, this is still treasured music. Careful listeners will hear the distant echoes of this style in his tribal ambience. Many artists have followed Roach, but few have caught up to him. Quiet Music is "dedicated to the passing of time and the experience of watching particles in sunlight." This series, by Steve Roach, honors quiet time and "noiselessness" with very low-key, subtle minimalism. Quiet Music, Vol. 2 is the second album of the set. Roach builds his smooth soundscapes from light and breezy atmospheres. He builds the atmospheres, appropriately, from soft drones. He is inviting listeners to sit and regard their surroundings in -- well -- quiet solitude. Roach's discs are all very good or better. This fits well with his pure electronic and space music efforts. Quiet Music, Vol. 3 is the essence of pure, meditative ambience. Steve Roach has always been a visionary performer; his work defines "elegant futurism." He released this on cassette in 1986 and it remains in the forefront of introspective minimalism. This series set the stage for all minimalists to follow. He was one of the first to demonstrate that ambient minimalism does not have to be dark, that it can be bright and hopeful without becoming maudlin or too new age. This is groundbreaking space music from an epic and legendary performer. He is peerless in his corner of the perpendicular universe.


Tracklist :
CD1:
01.See Things (5:59)
02.Towards the Blue (3:30)
03.Something in Tears (5:37)
04.A Few More Moments (13:13)
05.Air and Light (32:12)
06.Dreaming and Sleep (13:29)

CD2:
01.The Green Place (31:50)
02.Sleep and Dreaming (30:36)
03.Quiet Canon (7:51)