Steve Roach

Steve Roach is a California-born composer who spent his early twenties teaching himself synthesizer after hearing Klaus Schulze, Tangerine Dream, and Vangelis - a sharp pivot from his earlier years as a motocross racer. His 1984 album Structures from Silence became a foundational text for the ambient genre, and the double-album Dreamtime Return (1988) later earned a spot in 1,000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die. Working from his Timeroom studio in the Sonoran Desert near Tucson, Arizona, Roach has assembled a catalog exceeding 200 releases, ranging from beatless deep-space atmospherics to rhythmic tribal-shamanic work shaped by extended trips to Australia and collaborations with Mexican musician Jorge Reyes. Two Grammy nominations - for Spiral Revelation (2017) and Molecules of Motion (2018) - mark two peaks in a five-decade output that continues to run ahead of the categories invented to describe it.