Here we are in a new year, and in that usually grim time of January when many people are sweating through their new years resolutions, or holing up indoors after a particularly draining holiday season. It’s the month of Blue Monday after all, and this month can be a bit of a hard slog for some people. And steadying myself for the ambitions of the new year I tend to need time to clear my mind and focus, and if anything, to get the momentum going after being on a completely different sort of schedule over the final weeks of the previous year.
With that brief introduction, I thought I’d start off with the first Track Of The Day for this new year with a little entry for American ambient composer Robert Rich. Probably not many people know about this artist — especially with the music circles I engage in — and if anything musicians working in these more ambient styles perhaps don’t position themselves as rock stars with hedonistic lifestyles, and therefore an artist most people wouldn’t know about anyway given what might be typically a lower profile.
Rich, along with other established ambient artists from America such as Steve Roach (who have collaborated and played concerts together), have been working in the genre since the 1970s and 1980s. Rich most notably got his start in composition and performance in the early 80s while attending Stanford University in California by putting on what have been called “sleep concerts” in the university dorms while there as a freshman. These events would run from 10pm to 7am in the morning, while Rich conjured abstract drones and soundscapes from his synthesizer and studio equipment while the attendees would bring their own sleeping bags and go in and out of sleep for the duration of these concerts.
Around this time Rich started doing performances in venues further afield than the student lounges of Stanford, and started what has become a long discography spanning the decades until now with a series of self-released cassette tapes in the early 1980s on his own Soundscape label. These early cassettes, which include Sūnyatā (1982), Trances (1984) and Drones (1984) would usually just consist of two or three compositions — an average of one per side — with each being anywhere from 15 minutes to 40 plus minutes in length as the vast spaces and long progressions in these pieces take the necessary time needed to pull the listener into trance. Unlike genres such as pop and rock, where the standard length is around 3-5 minutes, the purpose of these compositions is to take one into another space for a given period of time with the necessary time to do so, rather than trying to nab one with a catchy hook or what have you.
Eventually, with the popularisation of the compact disc format that would start to gain traction in the late 1980s, these three cassettes were compiled onto a 2xCD release called Trances And Drones in 1994 on the Extreme label and has since been re-issued on various labels since then. I’m not really sure how I came across this release, but I seem to remember it being a number of years ago with a friend over in America posting on social media about Robert Rich and writing some accolades about his admiration for them. Given that I’ve always had an interest in this type of music, I naturally went to check it out.
Since that time it is admittedly one of the releases I’ve listened to the most and with that most of the time when I’m semi-conscious drifting off into sleep. I have a regular habit of listening to more “low key” music when preparing to drift off into dreamland and Rich’s early work definitely assists in that. A track like “Wheel Of Earth”, featured here in its full length of 28 minutes, mainly features a massive dissonant underlying drone with long, single-note ambient synth lines that morph into different notes over a long time dilation. There’s something about the frequencies and the deepness of the lower end sounds that start pulling my brain out of reality, like the feeling of falling through some massive galactic tunnel that traverses incredible distances of time and space. A subtle blend of the frighteningly awesome and serene contemplation.
Another of Rich‘s tracks on this release, “Hayagriva”, is more subdued and less “broad” sounding, but still carries that feeling of the frightening size of space.
If anything there’s a lot of micropolyphony going on in between the harmonics, a concept of 20th century music composition that was brought somewhat to the public consciousness by a composer like György Ligeti from Hungary. Most people would likely be familiar with his work being used in a number of Stanley Kubrick films, including 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and The Shining (1980).
Since his start in those university lodgings Rich has released dozens of releases — most of which I’m unfamiliar with — and has slowly but surely built a devout following over the decades. Over the past year I checked out one of his newer releases, Long Tail Of The Quiet Gong, which is an expansive listen, especially at its “feature film” length of 1 hour and 30 minutes. In addition to a variety of synthesizers and an arsenal of studio effects to create the soundscapes, it would seem over these releases that other sound sources are used as well — mainly environmental — including field recordings, tapes and even metal sculptures as well, reminding me of sources that other more current composers working in similar fields would use, such as Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe, which I’ve also covered.
One final thought here that’s crossed my mind at times regarding this style of music is that with the ongoing fetishization of vinyl LPs that continues on almost a century after its invention, is that this is one style of music really is somewhat problematic with the limitations of vinyl — that mainly being length. Rich, and other composers like Steve Roach, tend to have tracks that can easily go over an hour in length. And given that vinyl tends to prefer side lengths that are around the 18-20 minute mark, vinyl can be cumbersome, especially when you’re having to flip sides. This will obviously become an issue when a listener is half asleep and semi-conscious either in bed or crashed out on the couch and the needle picks up to the rest position and the listener is having to muster the energy to get up and flip the record.
I suppose with cassettes, then with the rise of the compact disc and then finally digital/streaming, that this form of music found more suitable mediums for listening. Releases of 2xCD and 3xCD become a regular thing.
I remember joking with a friend once about a “greatest hits” or a compilation of singles from such ambient artists — each track taking up a whole CD or whatever. Something I haven’t seen yet, or not aware of!