Quiet Music

Steve Roach

January 10, 2020

Ambient / Drone

The meditative, ambient minimalism of the Quiet Music series is available in its entirety in all the Bandcamp formates, a 3-CD digi-pak release and now 3 Vinyl LPs. Originally released in the mid-'80s on cassette and later in a truncated 2-CD edition, This current complete edition of Quiet Music (The Original 3-Hour Collection) presents this landmark album series exactly as Roach envisioned it. Quiet Music is a collection of pieces created between 1983 and 1986 in respect for silence. The gentle electronics of Roach's synthesizers mix with flute, electric piano and sounds of nature flowing like breath, enveloping the listener in a sustained, delicate, translucent atmosphere. Much of this music began as a series of early-’80s recordings commissioned by healing-arts programs and later used for everything from personal meditation to birthing music. Today these pieces still stand as a cornerstone in body-work, yoga, and healing therapies. The enduring nature of this music is even more significent when placed in the context of the ’80s climate from which it originated. “In looking at the arc of my music, nearly 30 years after creating Quiet Music,” Roach reflects, “I still feel an unbroken connection to this same inner breath and pulse I was discovering within myself and my creative life at that time. Even with everything that was going on in the early ’80s — musically, culturally, politically – this music came to exist in its own dimension, outside of that time, separate from the day-to-day climate in which I was surrounded. I was yearning to express a timeless and universal soul-tone, a safe haven within the music. I had tapped into a reliable way to access this quiet repose at several favorite getaways in nature which was the main influence of this music.” Harold Budd, September 29, 1986: “I think Steve Roach’s Quiet Music is his best album. It’s not that it’s simply pretty (which it is), but there’s an odd edge lurking in the background that moves it miles away from ‘New Age’ torpor. This is a lovely album from a composer working at the top of his skills” Listening to the release anew, one can sense Roach’s emerging vision of expressing a rarified, tranquil inner experience through sound and music: a vision both emotional and vivid. The soothing, introspective nature of Quiet Music flows at a time-suspending pace, gently evolving and using space to expand and explore the essence of silence. The space between the notes and the breathing quality bring the listener to a deeper awareness of the present moment. Darren Bergstein, One Thousand Pulses: “Finally reissued in its entirety, Roach’s classic minimalist paean of austere beauty is both profound and timeless with its delicately folding textures seemingly minted from the very skeins of heaven itself.”