Early Man
by John Diliberto, Tower Pulse!
May 2001
Steve Roach takes another plunge into the primordial slime on EARLY MAN, an album that seems to well up from the dark underbelly of the psyche like the id unleashed. By morphing electronic textures with the tribal percussion of doom that has dominated most of his albums for the last decade, Roach orchestrates a landscape of the abyss. Originally released in 2000 as a limited-edition album packaged in two slabs of gray slate, EARLY MAN represented the antediluvian state of earliest consciousness. This edition features that original CD plus an additional, even murkier remix disc in a more conventional jewel box.
In Roach's world, percussion moves like a slow-motion march, as mutated sounds scrape, moan and shake. More than a dark ambient album, Roach's hallucinogenic sound world harkens back to the electroacoustic abstractions of Karlheinz Stockhausen on "Aus den Sieben Tagen" or "Telemusik," although Roach provides more signposts, like the overlapping rhythms and plaintive guitar arpeggio of the title track. EARLY MAN is a hole ripped in time, immersing you in the deep.
by John Diliberto, Tower Pulse!
May 2001
Steve Roach takes another plunge into the primordial slime on EARLY MAN, an album that seems to well up from the dark underbelly of the psyche like the id unleashed. By morphing electronic textures with the tribal percussion of doom that has dominated most of his albums for the last decade, Roach orchestrates a landscape of the abyss. Originally released in 2000 as a limited-edition album packaged in two slabs of gray slate, EARLY MAN represented the antediluvian state of earliest consciousness. This edition features that original CD plus an additional, even murkier remix disc in a more conventional jewel box.
In Roach's world, percussion moves like a slow-motion march, as mutated sounds scrape, moan and shake. More than a dark ambient album, Roach's hallucinogenic sound world harkens back to the electroacoustic abstractions of Karlheinz Stockhausen on "Aus den Sieben Tagen" or "Telemusik," although Roach provides more signposts, like the overlapping rhythms and plaintive guitar arpeggio of the title track. EARLY MAN is a hole ripped in time, immersing you in the deep.
  feature |
Steve Roach 2001 Projekt PRO111 (CD) Reviewed by Jim Brenholts, All Music Guide, Alternative Press, AmbiEntrance, CD Services (UK), Incursion, Ink 19, Ink 19, Muze, Outburn, Sonic Curiosity, Star's End, StarVox, The Raging Consciousness Desk, Tower Pulse! Best described as primeval innerspace deep ambient. EARLY MAN brings into form an ancient landscape of bubbling pools and steamy marshlands, verdant arroyos and monolithic rock formations. Cave paintings and ancient memories come to life in a slow soul-dance of evolutionary magic. The accolades from press and listeners alike tell that EARLY MAN belongs to Roach's classic body of work which includes DREAMTIME RETURN, ORIGINS, THE MAGNIFICENT VOID and last year's quietly successful MIDNIGHT MOON.
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 feature |
Steve Roach 2000 Manifold (CD)
limited edition, packaged between two slabs of real slate |