Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
Purchasable with gift card
$7USD or more
Compact Disc - the last ones
Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album
This album came out originally on Lustmord's Side Effects label in 1998, and I made a reprint after the distributor shut down in the mid-2000s. Currently we have about 70 remaining (as of 2019), and we will not reprint them when they eventually sell out. If you want an autograph, please request it at the time of purchase.
Includes unlimited streaming of Below Zero
via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
Robert Rich's "Below Zero" marks his second collection of dark-ambient compilation tracks, following the 1996 Fathom release "A Troubled Resting Place." Like the previous album, Rich conceived "Below Zero" while recording each track individually for release on compilations and limited editions, using these oportunities to research new vocabularies and techniques. Each track originates with dual intentions: to stand on its own within a multi- artist compilation, and to fulfill its unique niche as part of a larger story. Rich uses this approach to break out of his own habits, allowing him to assemble a unified album while encouraging freeform experimentation within individual compositions. The approach resembles that of the writer who constructs a novel from individual inter-related short stories (a tradition practiced by novelists as diverse as Dickens and J.G. Ballard.)
"Below Zero" tells a story of infinite distance, inhuman scale and deep time. It ranks among Rich's most foreboding and expansive works, with its vast surrealist soundscapes, clouds of shifting metallic overtones, indefinable mutations and sinuous threads of melting sonorities. It also represents a significant technical achievement, using sound design techniques that range from phase vocoding and granular synthesis, to open-loop feedback networks and chaotic electro-acoustic systems. Yet somehow within this isolated landscape of unfamiliar sounds, there shines the intense and melancholy sort of beauty that permeates Rich's singular sonic universe.
credits
released June 15, 1998
Robert Rich:
Analog and digital synths, steel guitar, flutes,
entropic systems and controlled feedback.
Star Maker first appeared on Narratives: Works of Fiction (Manifold MANCD08, 1996) Titles from Olaf Stapledon, Star Maker, 1937, Dover Publications, NY, (ed. 1968); Dissolving the Seeds of a Moment previously unreleased; Flock of Metal Creatures recorded for the Multimood 10th Anniversary Compilation (Multimood, due in 1998); Termite Epiphany created originally for Dry Lungs VI (Subterranean, due in 1998) Thanks to Tom Erbe (Soundhack) and Rick Davies (loose guitar string); Liquid Air first appeared on From Here to Tranquility II (Silent SR9343, 1994); Requiem is dedicated to the memory of David Schultz, and appeared first on Soundscapes Gallery (Lektronic Soundscapes LS96007, 1996.)
Robert Rich has helped define ambient and electronic music, with over 50 albums across five decades. Rich began building his
own analog modular synthesizers in 1976, when he was 13, and later studied computer music at Stanford's CCRMA while researching lucid dreaming. Rich performs and lectures worldwide. His all-night Sleep Concerts have become legendary....more
A soothing, yet stimulating, set of ambient-adjacent electronic tracks influenced by ’80s Japanese new age music and euclidian music theory. Bandcamp New & Notable Jul 6, 2022
Now THIS is the ultimate Christmas-gift..! Deep, soothing, comforting, and above all: classic Steve! This will be on repeat a lot.. Hopefully this will come as a CD/vinyl-release as well! Thanks Steve and best wishes from the heart. Berkdrums