Buy Now: CDBaby, iTunes

The San Francisco Bay Area Progressive rockers New Sun have released their 5th album, Transitory.

A diverse album of prog, heavy rock, folk, electronic rock and ambient. Modern progressive rock!

New Sun has produced odd metered progressive rock for over two decades, getting more inventive and creative with each album (5 total). Transitory is their best album to date with fine song craft and story telling, all wrapped in harmonic colors to stimulate the mind. Cinema for the ears …

New Sun – Transitory

1. Gravity Well 2:40
2. Vigilance 4:47
3. The Beguiler 5:06
4. Espiritu 6:53
5. Transitory 8:54
6. Slipstream Day 6:13
7. Down by Sea 4:58
8. Eddies in the Stream 6:31

Buy Now: CDBaby, iTunes

Moog Releases Robert Rich EP to Commemorate Discontinuation of Iconic Synth

Today, Moog Music announced the official discontinuation of the Minimoog Voyager Rack Mount Edition (Voyager RME) analog synthesizer – a tabletop, rack-mountable version of Moog’s flagship analog mono synth, the Minimoog Voyager. The Minimoog Voyager was Bob Moog’s modern day re-imagining of the Minimoog Model D, the most iconic analog synthesizer of all time.

Since its introduction in 2005, the Minimoog Voyager RME has found its place on thousands of records and stages around the world. On the Alive Tour, Daft Punk’s monolithic pyramid was powered by 4 Voyager RMEs, while electronic musicians like Orbital, Deadmau5, Tycho and R&B producer Brian Michael Cox all rely on the sonic abilities of the Voyager RME to deliver new sounds for their studio productions.

“Ten years ago, Bob and I struggled over whether or not to release the Minimoog Voyager RME. Thankfully we did, because so many wonderful works of art have been produced with it,” said Moog Music President Mike Adams. “It’s always difficult for us to end the life of a product, especially one that Bob designed himself, but I am happy to know that the artists fortunate enough to own one of these expressive tools will enjoy a lifetime of rich musical experiences,” said Adams.

To celebrate the legacy of this powerful analog instrument, ambient electronic music pioneer, Robert Rich has composed a 3 song EP of evolving soundscapes titled “Hiding In Daylight“. Rich’s work is a meditative exploration of organic analog sound, drawing on the rich tonal palette of the Minimoog Voyager RME.

[source]

Sounds Of A Tired City | Exper:Mental Exh:B:Ton

Watch/Read/Travel: Robert Rich

June 4, 2015

Stalker (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1979). I tend to follow certain rare directors whom I trust, because I have trouble with the loudness and violence of most Hollywood movies. I rarely watch new films, although I love great filmmaking. My favorites include Ingmar Bergman, Federico Fellini, Alain Resnais, Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Terry Gilliam, Michel Gondry, Werner Herzog… but most importantly I owe a deep debt of gratitude to Andrei Tarkovsky. Four of his films rank among the most important art I have experienced in my life: ‘Stalker’, ‘Nostalgia’, ‘The Mirror’, and ‘The Sacrifice’. It is not an accident that I named several albums and compositions after his films. ‘Stalker’ is almost the perfect Hero’s Journey, the Joseph Campbell model of the allegorical mystical quest to self-discovery. The Zone represents the unknowable, the blank slate, or the emptiness (“Sunyata” perhaps?). It personifies Numin, the magical energy of a place (I named an album ‘Numina’ because I am very attracted to this idea of the energy of a place). The Zone becomes a Rorschach test for people, and the only person who seems immune from its dangerous forces is the one person who doesn’t seek anything from it. The Stalker is not greedy, he respects the Zone and its wisdom. Therefore the Zone does not tear him open into an ugly example of humanity, as it does to the people he takes to its center, who only expose their greed and resentment. The Zone mirrors what is in their hearts, but the Stalker’s heart is honest (not pure – it is full of pain, but he does not seek retribution.) As a gift we see that the Zone is creating a new form of energy… the Stalker’s daughter shows signs of telekinesis. I don’t know any other film that I could watch with pleasure as many times as ‘Stalker’ except perhaps some of Tarkovsky’s other films (‘The Sacrifice’ especially!) … or perhaps Jeunet’s ‘Amélie’ just for the sheer joy of living in the world it creates.

Among so many great books, the one that I return to the most is ‘Star Maker‘ by Olaf Stapledon. The author was a Quaker in England living during the Great Wars of the early 20th century, a pacifist and conscientious objector during World War One. He is considered one of the greatest early science fiction writers along with Jules Verne and H.G. Wells. I think he intended his writing to show people possible ways of thinking beyond our animal short-sightedness, which leads usually to violence. He wrote ‘Star Maker’ in the mid-1930’s during the growth of the Nazis and forebodings about the next big conflagration. It is essentially a 200 page out-of-body-experience: the narrator flies away from earth as pure mind, and makes contact with consciousness of all types, ever increasing in scope and time until he starts to see an overview of the meaning of life, the smallness of the individual in reference to the large picture, the fragility of life in relation to cosmic scale and deep time. For example, at a certain point he learns that stars themselves have consciousness, and they become distraught that the most dominant creatures in the galaxy have started engineering the motions of their planets. Out of shame from the departure from natural symmetries, the stars begin exploding as a suicidal means to maintain balance. Every chapter in the book is full of detail about possible worlds, possible ‘otherness’ which is also very familiar, a pattern of meaning, yearning towards consciousness. Although there is a naive character in the book that derives from the era when it was written (we know a lot more about cosmology now, and we don’t tend to think in Theistic terms) the pure creative beauty of ‘Star Maker’ makes it one of the most important books in my life.

My favorite paradise is the one that evades our view because it is so close, the place we could see everyday that might be the most beautiful place on earth. The redwood groves of northern California are my cathedrals, my most sacred place. If I drive 40 minutes, I can get to a place called Memorial Park in the Santa Cruz mountains. The trees here are 1000 years old (not the oldest redwoods by any means). They have signs of old fires, some evidence of logging 150 years ago. The wildlife is quiet – the birds and insects do not make much noise here. The wind is soft in the tall forest. The fog dripping into the sparse undergrowth etches a different kind of silence. This cathedral was not built by humans, not built for humans. We are only observers, visitors. We are foreign to this, it came millions of years before us; yet this is our adopted home. Under the logs live salamanders and frogs, beetles, ants and grubs. The chemistry of the soil makes for a minimal understory, few plants can grow in the high acid and low light. The views through the shafts of tall trees are clear within the shadows and fog. Although I delight in collecting wild mushrooms, the redwoods do not play host to many edible species of fungus. This is not a place where humans find much food. The ferns and azaleas are toxic plants, as is the hemlock and poison oak. The redwoods themselves create a tannin that protects them from wood-eating insects – which is one reason people logged these forests so destructively, to start the cities on the west coast of the USA. When we have visitors from far away, I like to take them to our redwood forests, to the remaining old growth, to show them the cathedrals built by trees, the silence and dark solitude that only invites people who wish to share their shadows with respect, to show them the silence that I learned to love and tried to emulate, branded on my childhood consciousness.

[source]

Artist: Robert Rich

Album: Filaments

Genre: Ambient/Electronica

Review by Richard Dickow, Jr. for ArtsEarth

There’s a spaceship that can take you to outer space. It can even take you to inner space. It’s uses ambient electronic music to unleash the power of your mind and it’s piloted by Robert Rich.

Filaments is the latest installment in his 30 year long process of composing which includes the stuff dreams are made of. Literally. Rich has performed overnight while the audience dreamt in sleeping bags they brought to the show. He built synthesizers and other musical instruments like a steel guitar to produce sounds that are more than worthy of our ears. Now he’s still crafting music you can use to transcend this Earthly plane.

You can hear the inspiration of space and physics in the new album, which contains etheric drones and well articulated harmonic synths. Beautiful layers combine to give a peaceful sound that is gentle on the ears and invites the imagination. Since Rich is known for making his own libraries of sounds, don’t be surprised that he found a way to capture the sound of the great beyond. He boldly goes where no one has gone before and is generous enough to share it’s treasures with us.

• Robert Rich Filaments Spring Tour 2015

Artist: Robert Rich

Album: Filaments

Genre: Ambient/Electronica

Review by Morpheus Music Reviews

STYLE

Robert Rich explores a fascination with the beguiling nature of existence and our unique place in the universe through a series of luminescent, rhythmic ambient compositions. Heaving up out of darkness, Filaments early on establishes a great shadowy expanse through which twinkling threads, welling waves and rippling sequencer patterns ebb and flow. Not dissimilar in nature to Electric Ladder, Filaments features a variety of bright cycling patterns that gradually evolve and shift, a coruscating contrast to the drifting beds of swaying drones and lightly wafting steel guitar strains. Sleeve notes list instruments included as “MOTM and Euro modular, DSI P12 and Pro2, Lap Steel Guitars (by Todd Plummer and Morrell), Korg Wavestation and M3, zither, piano, Eowave Ribbon and Resonator, various other instruments.” There are passages here of delicate beauty, that send the emotions gently soaring; regions of deep introspective, slow-motion eddying; currents of glimmering brilliance where layered synthetic latticeworks spiral and repeat.

ARTWORK

Filaments is delivered in a sharp three-section digipack. The front cover painting is of a peculiar organic flower-like form draped with gossamer filaments that seem to issue from within and to cloak everything in billowing layers. The rear cover holds a darker, closer image of a similar subject, track titles bright against the gloom. Here are credits and recording details along with brief thanks. The final outer panel unfolds to present a detailed discussion of the inspirations behind the sounds. Within, all three panels are given over to a panoramic painting of three reflective spheres sparkling with scintillations of light.

OVERALL

Ambient, experimental musician/composer Robert Rich worked on Filaments between 2012 and 2014, releasing the completed album via Soundscape Productions in January of this year. There are nine tracks on the disc: six are relatively brief at around four to five minutes; two are extended pieces closer to ten minutes. In total the whole clocks in at just short of an hour’s music. There is a delightful sense of wonder permeating much of the music that is nicely in keeping with the theme as well as an ongoing natural harmony and consonance. Find out more about Filaments and the thoughts behind the music (including the intriguiging track titles) at Robert Rich.

Robert Rich – Filaments

Soundscape Productions SP026, CD/Download – BUY MUSIC

©℗ 2015 by Robert Rich, BMI.

Shimmering, pulsating, woven patterns of electrical filagree echo hidden structures that permeate space and time, inspired by our latest forays in cosmology and the constant search to understand our place in the vastness.

Recorded 2012-2014 by Robert Rich at Soundscape, Mountain View, CA. Mixed and mastered in Autumn 2014. Instruments include MOTM and Euro modular, DSI P12 and Pro2, Lap Steel Guitars (by Todd Plummer and Morrell), Korg Wavestation and M3, zither, piano, Eowave Ribbon and Resonator, various other instruments. Thanks to many, including Synthesis Technology, Dave Smith Instruments, 2C Audio, Izotope, Old Crow, STG, Ableton, and of course Dixie. Front cover painting Luminary © Nad Wolinska, inside painting Three Spheres Reflecting Upon Each Other © Daniel Cake, used with permission and gratitude. Luminary photo by Christian Tanimoto III. Design and layout by John Bergin. More.

Filaments of silent matter surround us. Rivers of particles pass through, unscathed. Fields of energy engulf us, curving through vacuum. Invisible glue coagulates light. Briefly alive, we try to decode time’s transit, to unwrap hidden forces that fuel the ever accelerating distance.

I am deeply inspired by the scientific forays helping us to discover habitable planets besides earth, showing us that we are almost certainly not alone in the Universe. I feel wonder at our efforts to place our precarious existence into the context of this 13.8 billon year old reality, and at our model-building nature, trying to understand the shape of space and time.

As I sought inspiration for this music in the realms of physics and cosmology, I found that the concept of the Anthropic Principle helps to connect my sense of wonder with the scientific curiosity that keeps us doubting what we think we know. The Anthropic Principle observes that our particular universe is well suited to evolve consciousness within it, as evidenced by the fact that we exist. As we look within our own consciousness, we find our place in this immensity, as an eye of the universe observing itself. This doesn’t place humanity in a special central position, but does make note of the surprising complexity of our existence. As we proceed to undermine the dynamic balance that helped us evolve on this Eden Earth, putting our own future in doubt, we should pause to understand the miracle that allowed us to exist at all.

Filaments are the strands of condensed energy-matter that formed out of the earliest inflationary period in our universe, and helped pull together the gasses that eventually became our cosmos. A Majorana Fermion is a particle that is also its own antiparticle. In condensed matter physics, it might help us understand how superconductivity works, and in cosmology it might hold a key to the puzzle of dark matter. Scintilla describes the light of the stars, which help us look back into time as well as distance. Aetherfields ponders the idea that empty space might actually have a propagating substrate, an aether – an idea rejected in the last century, but reexamined more recently, to try once again to unify gravitation with quantum physics. Entangled gets its name from a special relationship between two particles, when the state of one can be known by the state its entangled partner (for example, the polarity of two photons that have been generated symmetrically.) Bell’s Theorem allows that in this manner, information might travel faster than light. Eulalia is a group of near-earth asteroids, and (495) Eulalia is identified as the source for a meteorite landing near Sutter’s Mill CA in 2013. It appears that much of the earth’s past and future – and the ingredients for life itself – are shaped by frequent bombardments from space. Laniakea is the name given to our local supercluster of galaxies, spanning 160 megaparsecs with around 100,000 galaxies including the Milky Way. Aetherfolds imagines the warping of space-time by gravitation or motion. Telomeres are repeating bits of DNA at the tips of our chromosomes, which augment every time a cell divides. Perhaps these act as ticking clocks, defining our biological age, reminding every cell of our mortality.

Robert Rich is doing his part to make December more fun. For any order over $20.00 (USD) from our Soundscape order form, they’ll include a copy of Percy Howard’s Meridiem “A Scattering Time” for Free. It’s an intense album, not for everyone, so they’ll only send a copy if you click the box on the form to request it.

Across three decades and over 30 albums, Robert Rich has helped define the genres of ambient music, dark-ambient, tribal and trance, yet his music remains hard to categorize. Part of his unique sound comes from using home-made acoustic and electronic instruments, microtonal harmonies, computer-based signal processing, chaotic systems and feedback networks. Rich began building his own analog synthesizers in 1976, when he was 13 years old, and later studied for a year at Stanford’s Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA).

Also, Robert Rich has had many requests for “Perpetual” downloads from purchasers of the Blu-ray. During December they’ll include a free Download Card for FLAC or MP3 files from CD Baby, for anyone who orders the Blu-ray edition. (Or, if you ask Robert Rich directly, he can offer Blu-ray purchasers access to a DropBox folder with MP3 files.)

Robert Rich Discography

• Perpetual – A Somnium Continuum (2014)
• Premonitions 1980-1985 (2014)
• Meridiem – A Scattering Time (2014)
• Morphology (2014)
• Trances & Drones (Reissue, 2013)
• Sunyata & Inner Landscapes (Reissue, 2013)
• Nest (2012)
• Medicine Box (2011)
• Ylang (2010)
• Live Archive Series (2009)
• Zerkalo (with Faryus, 2008)
• React (with Ian Boddy, 2008)
• Eleven Questions (with Markus Reuter, 2007)
• Illumination (2007)
• Atlas Dei – DVD (2007)
• Music from Atlas Dei (2007)
• Electric Ladder (2006)
• Lithosphere (with Ian Boddy, 2005)
• Echo of Small Things (2005)
• Calling Down the Sky (Live, 2004)
• Open Window (2004)
• Temple of the Invisible (2003)
• Outpost (with Ian Boddy, 2002)
• Bestiary (2001)
• Somnium (7 hours, 2001)
• Humidity (Live, 2000)
• Pivot (with Amoeba, 2000)
• Inner Landscapes (1999)
• Below Zero (1998)
• Seven Veils (1998)
• Numena + Geometry (1997)
• Fissures (1997)
• Watchful (with Amoeba, 1997)
• A Troubled Resting Place (1996)
• Stalker (with Lustmord, 1995)
• Yearning (with Lisa Moskow, 1994)
• Propagation (1994)
• Eye Catching (with Amoeba, 1993)
• Soma (with Steve Roach, 1992)
• Gaudi (1991)
• Strata (with Steve Roach, 1990)
• Rainforest (1989)
• Numena (1987)
• Inner Landscapes (1985)

CD Baby 1¢ Shipping | DEC. 1-3, 2014

For three days, December 1-3 (2014) CD Baby is offering 1¢ shipping for orders anywhere in the world. That’s a great deal, especial for purchasers outside of the USA. Also, checkout Robert Rich’s Full Discography.

Across three decades and over 30 albums, Robert Rich has helped define the genres of ambient music, dark-ambient, tribal and trance, yet his music remains hard to categorize. Part of his unique sound comes from using home-made acoustic and electronic instruments, microtonal harmonies, computer-based signal processing, chaotic systems and feedback networks. Rich began building his own analog synthesizers in 1976, when he was 13 years old, and later studied for a year at Stanford’s Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA).

Robert Rich on CDBaby.com

• Perpetual – A Somnium Continuum (2014)
• Morphology (2014)
• Somnium (Full Version, 2013)
• Trances & Drones (Reissue, 2013)
• Sunyata & Inner Landscapes (Reissue, 2013)
• Nest (2012)
• Medicine Box (2011)
• Ylang (2010)
• Music from Atlas Dei (2007)
• Illumination (2007)
• Electric Ladder (2006)
• Echo of Small Things (2005)
• Calling Down the Sky (Live, 2004)
• Open Window (2004)
• Temple of the Invisible (2003)
• Bestiary (2001)
• Somnium (7 hours, 2001)
• Humidity (Live, 2000)
• Below Zero (1998)

Live Archive Series (2009)

• Mycosphere: Live on KFJC, May 31 2008
• Lumin: Live at Camerawork, March 6 2008
• Live at Cowell Theater, San Francisco, May 12 2002
• Alien Zoology: Live at Morrison Planetarium, San Francisco, December 9 2001
• Shamballa: Live in Costa Mesa CA, May 20 2000
• Due Acque: Live in Umbria Italy, April 1 2000
• Ici et Maintenant: Live in Paris, May 12 1989

Gnome & Spybey return with their third release on Crime League entitled ‘Reflective’.

Mark Spybey is no stranger to the annals of experimental ambient music, having been involved in a diverse range of projects such as Download, Zoviet France, Beehatch, and most famously Dead Voices on Air. Tony D’Oporto is another musical veteran with his own project Gnomes of Kush, though his talents have been more in the beat-driven genres of trance, synthpop, house and Down Tempo music. Together, these two masters of atmospheric craft form Gnome & Spybey.

Featuring 10 new songs, including collaborations with Robert Rich, Tom Shear, Simon Polinski, Dominic Smelt and Crime League’s own Displacer.

Available in Limited Edition CD with Poster and digital format November 15, 2014.

See more …

• 01. There are Gnomes
• 02. Achim
• 03. Through My Childs Eyes
• 04. The Ballad of Bernadine Dohrn
• 05. To See With the Eyes of an Angel
• 06. Trois Gnomnes
• 07. Atomes
• 08. Gigantic
• 09. Nine
• 10. A Way to Begin

Written and produced by Tony D’Oporto, Mark Spybey and (2) Tom Shear (3) Michael Morton (5) Dominic Smelt (6 & 7) Robert Rich (10) Simon Polinski

Mastering by Steven Seibold at Uniform Media

Cover art by Christopher Buening Layout

Design by Marco Roberti

Copyright © Gnome & Spybey and Crime League 2014, All rights reserved.

This San Francisco Bay Area ambient pioneer [Robert Rich] began building his own synthesizer at the age of 13 – around the same time he became interested in avant-garde and minimal composition. By the time he got to college at Stanford (around 1981), he began organizing “sleep concerts,” playing abstract drones and soundscapes to influence audiences’ REM cycles. This lecture covers music as ritual, modular synths, mastering advice, magic, sampling tree frogs, and psytrance raves… among many other things.

[Red Bull Music Academy – RBMA]