Robert Rich – Premonitions 1980-1985

“Undoubtedly, Rich’s imprimatur was hallmarked early on, his feel for what constituted moods both light and dark colored in from the outset. His facility with manipulating sound borders on the sublime. The respiratory atmospheres on “Clouds” are practically abyssal as Rich merges the infinite expanse of ambient with the exhaustive hypnos of drone to conjugative effect, while two longform works, “Live Monterrey” and “Live Stanford” demonstrate how he could reincarnate the ghosts of Tangerine Dreams both literal and far-flung with ease. The softly purring sequencer motif of “Monterrey” is especially galvanizing, augmented by a repeating bell-like substructure, trance music that plays with the subconscious as hallucinogenically as Terry Riley’s minimalist exercises. The reams of velvet darkness extracted from “Live Stanford” and “Guitar Drone” are the precursors of his often mammoth sleep concerts of the era, narcotic mini-symphonies of inner ear tilt and mind-altering REM deprivation. Contrast all this then to “CCRMA Voices” and “Manna,” two of the box sets’ most distinctive tracks. The former finds Rich exploring Stanford’s computer music lab, recontextualizing Froeseian arpeggios in a magnificently elegant filter sweep of quark and quirk, married to a pristine, knotted pretzel logic of notes as American as silver apple pie. “Manna” is Rich’s love letter to the Prophet 5 synth, an infectious seventeen minutes of bulking metallic drift, cosmic flutes, and interstellar clarion calls, a blast of pure, unadulterated space music that distilled the very essence of his post-adolescent muse.” – Darren Bergstein

Label: Vinyl-On-Demand – VOD122

Format: 4xVinyl, LP, Compilation, Box Set

Country: Germany

Released: 2014

NM/VG+. Records look unplayed. Box has small 1 1/2 inch split at center top on back.