When you think ambient music, it’s easy to recognize a name like Steve Roach. Steve Roach has been involved in so many variations of the art of ambient, and with so many artists of note, that it could be said that he may be the single most practiced ambient master in the genre. Certainly he is the genre’s most prolific with more than 45 solo efforts since 1982, and a massive array of collaborative works amounting to more than 40 albums.
One of his first albums, the 1984 ambient classic, Structures From Silence, has risen in the ranks of all-time bests that now make it one of the most influential albums ever created in the ambient genre, fourth only to Brian Eno’s legendary Music For Airports, his own classic, Dreamtime Return (2003), and Sonic Seasonings, the 1972 celebration of the seasons by Wendy Carlos.
Celebrating its 30th Anniversary, Steve Roach has gone back to the master tapes and have remastered the set for a 24-bit/96k audio enhancement. The original album was released by Fortuna Records, an early ambient label. Since, Projekt Records, who has provided Steve Roach with a label home for several decades, re-released the classic in 2001, also with a new remaster. But what sets this one apart is its higher resolution, opening up the original to perhaps newer heights in sound than ever thought possible.
For this release, Steve Roach has included two bonus CDs of music from 2013 that contain tracks with hints of the music of Structures From Silence. Good music never dies; it just keeps evolving. And you’ll hear those evolutionary paths on the bonus CDs.
Structures From Silence is scheduled for April 15 from Projekt Records. It will present in both the anticipated 3CD set, as well as a single CD with just the original three tracks. Both albums will provide the original artwork from the Fortuna Records set.