Margen Magazine
May 2002
Q: I think that WORLD'S EDGE is a turning point in your career. A different impulse to your music (it's a personal and subjective opinion, of course). Are you okay with this opinion? How did you conceive this work?
A: This is a sharp perception that hardly anyone makes. I have always felt WORLD'S EDGE was a sort of lost release. Perhaps being somewhat in the shadow of DREAMTIME RETURN was part of it. Also, at the time the record company was going through personnel changes that delayed the release, if I remember right. In any case, it was a very intense and wonderful time in that it was created right after moving to Tucson and finally setting up my studio and home in the desert. I was also starting a new relationship with my wife to be at the time, Linda Kohanov. I was simply intoxicated on being alive every day and so grateful to be out of Los Angeles and California which was quickly becoming overcrowded. I felt a sense of relief to be away from the hive of the city and finally living in the desert was a dream come true.
Along with all the personal changes, when I started work on WORLD'S EDGE I was constantly focused on this dramatic rock formation that I see from my studio window everyday, and that set the mood and created a focus as the music was born. Some days it was covered in clouds; other days it was burning with heat. I remember during a massive lightning storm, seeing a bolt of lightning hit the very top and just not let go. Amazing! It was really like how one might imagine a day right out of a dawn of time, creation of the earth with the forces of nature in full wrath. That's what these desert storms are like every summer. So all of this was what helped infuse the music on WORLD'S EDGE. I finally felt like I was where I longed to be with a new life unfolding.
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Steve Roach 1992 Fortuna 18057 (Cassette, CD) Reviewed by Hannah M.G. Shapero, Eclectic Earwig Reviews, Margen Magazine, Muze, Synth Music Direct The double-CD WORLD'S EDGE was Steve's first solo project created after his move to Tucson in 1990. At last the inspirations that fueled his music for years were right outside the studio, helping to feed an especially intense creative period. It is one that Steve looks back on as an important period of transition and discovery within the onion-skin-like evolution of his work. The roots of ORIGINS, ARTIFACTS, THE MAGNIFICENT VOID, and ON THIS PLANET are clearly present here, as well as the transition from the benchmark DREAMTIME RETURN. Disc two contains an often-overlooked hour-long piece, "To the Threshold Of Silence." This composition shows significant influences from Tibetan ceremonial music, with a fusion of deep space music, melding perfectly into Steve's landscapes of time-stretching textures. Added to this foundation is harmonic singing, processed gongs, Tibetan bells, and deep Earth pulses, all combined to created a kind of ancient-modern sacred space. This groundbreaking long-form piece foreshadowed THE DREAM CIRCLE, SLOW HEAT, ATMOSPHERIC CONDITIONS and PRAYERS TO THE PROTECTOR. This rediscovery will delight both old listeners and those newly-experiencing Steve's vast musical journey.
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