STEVE ROACH / Brian Parnham The Desert Inbetween CD Digipack 2011

The Desert Inbetween

CD Digipack

1 Opening Sky  11:03
2 Ancestral Passage  9:19
3 Serpent Gulch  11:11
4 Somewhere Between  7:13
5 Spirit Passage  4:14
6 Return To The Underground  17:14
7 When The Raven Flies  6:31

Steve Roach’s unique soundquests continue to take him and his listeners on powerful journeys to worlds at once alien and familiar. On The Desert Inbetween, Roach teams up with fellow synthesist/percussionist/didgeridoo player Brian Parnham to explore a hybrid electronic acoustic soundworld sure to please listeners of Suspended Memories and Origins-era tribalism as well as The Serpent’s Lair-styled electronics.

The blending of highly-altered organic sounds and instruments (voices, bells, didgeridoo & percussion, Waterphone), electric guitar and a vast array of analog and digital instruments connects deep into the primal mind. Drawing inspiration from the stark and magnificent expanses of the desert southwest, this project explores the outer edges of solitude: psychological states accessed when the imagination is cut free from daily concerns and permitted to focus on the essentials.

The Desert Inbetween expresses a longing for a state of beautiful isolation. The desert bakes away the superfluous to bring about a heightened state of self awareness, the expanse in between ordinary reality and special states of connected, creative awareness.

The desert has long been a landscape that holds great inspiration for musical artists, writers and painters. To the receptive, it immediately provides a more direct path to the deeper self and source of one’s artistic impulses. As the land of extremes, the desert is alive with beauty, stark vastness, magnificent vistas and silence. All of these places are expressed on The Desert Inbetween. Both artists know this desert realm after years of being immersed in this environment. Either as a metaphor for the inner world or a direct interpretation, the dynamic and subtle interweave of this experience is clearly alive here.

The Desert Inbetween is a masterwork collaboration of organic, tribal ambient rhythms, nuanced hand-made sounds and searing textures.