“The Long Night is an ambient musical journey in the night heart where the sleep bickers with its misty guest and their premonitory fights”
1 Last Light 10:52 2 Season of Nights 10:16 3 The Deep Hours 12:25 4 Calm World 13:06 5 The Long Night 14:09 Projekt Records | PRO297
(CD/DDL 60:52) (V.F.) (Ambient Music)
In spite of all these albums where the apathetic winds sing on plains deserted by reliefs, the music of Steve Roach continues to seduce always as much as she calms. Composed with Kelly David, to whom we owe Broken Voyage, THE LONG NIGHT is an ambio-morphic ode for a long night when torments harass the rights for a sleep. A long night skillfully sculptured by some slow and captivating synth breezes of which the soothing breaths are confronted with the rebels of the insomnia.
And that begins with the hollow breaths which recall of the Last Light. The intro is relaxing with lines of synth which heap up such as a somber musical thick cloud pierced by fine chords which float like harmonies worn-out and lost in a dense sonic envelope which moves with the slowness of its opacity. The movement is familiar. Slow it floats with its duality between serenity and anxiety. If at times everything is quiet, we feel a threat soaked of tragedies which announce that the desired quietude will soon be perturbed by the guards of the awakening. And this is this impression which gets loose from the first night-waves of Season of Nights. If the movement always stays without beatings, we feel the hand of a trap which threatens the dreams to come with darker synth lines which, if wrap the movement of an intense sluggish sound mosaic, sneaks between the phases of the NREM sleep and REM sleep. Like black dreams, these lines infiltrate the confusion with sonic upheavals deserving of a storm that only dreams can foment inside the sleep. After this disturbing ambiosonic phase, the slow tribal rhythms of The Deep Hours go deeper into the anxiety with an ambient rhythm which magnetizes the howling winds. Calm World is as calmer as its naming and brings us back to the peace of mind abandoned by Season of Nights. Its second part offers an attractive paradisiacal approach with a charming sound universe where the carillons sing in a shower of prism. This is some great Steve Roach here who concludes his journey through the meanders of night tormented by a quietude desired and found in the winds of the serenity which lulls title-track.Steve Roach won't reinvent his style. His musical signature can vary between his long monuments of meditation and his structures fed by rhythmic disturbances, but it remains always unique… And it's the same thing when he collaborates with another artist. This being written, THE LONG NIGHT respects the ambient territories drawn by Steve Roach and the darker approaches, even dramatic, imagined by Kelly David. It's a journey in the night heart where the sleep bickers with its misty guest and their premonitory fights. It's pure candy for fans of deep ambiances which bicker between the serenity and its duality.
Sylvain Lupari (January 21st, 2014) *****
Available at Projekt Bandcamp