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Vital Weekly July 2006
Even when Steve Roach and Loren Nerell met in Los Angeles in 1981, Terraform is the first collaboration between the two. For Nerell is the newer name of the two, even when his name popped up in the early days of Vital Weekly. Taksu (Vital Weekly 386) was my first proper introduction to him. Steve Roach on the other never was properly introduced by a solo recording in Vital Weekly, for reasons I don't know, but he came as we reviewed CDs on such labels as Hypnos, Side Effects and with artists such as Jorge Reyes and Vidna Obmana. When I opened the package and saw the names of the musicians, I thought I was going for an ambient head trip for the next sixty or so minutes. But it was not, much to my surprise. At least not in the sense that I thought it would be. It's spacious, it's lenghty, but also much more experimental than I would have anticipated, most certainly in the somewhat atonal Ecopoiesis, in which a lot of similar but different layers move about in a slightly disharmonious way. But Texture Wall, which lasts nearly thirty minutes, brings back the wall of sound ambience, with chirping insects (or perhaps they are just another batch of analogue synths), which is darker than life, but wanderings through spacious themes. This daring combination of 'real' ambient vs 'a bit more experimental' works quite well on this CD. It doesn't necessarily mean that the world of ambient music is changed over with this, as what Roach and Nerell does so finely on this CD, is also done by others and they move on similar grounds altogether, but these masters do a more than excellent job here. With the weather today at least being as hot as an average day in Arizona (where Roach lives), one can do nothing but lie back and let this mass of sound flow uninterrupted. (FdW)
Electroambient Space August 2006
When I heard that Steve Roach and Loren Nerell were going to be releasing their first true collaboration, I was excited at the prospect, but I also had a preconception of how it would sound. Given Nerell's penchant for gamelan music, I was expecting Indonesian influences, something tribal perhaps. Instead, Terraform is a wondrous work of subtlety, as soft and as smooth as the beautiful sandstone pictured on the DVD-sized cover and the three large postcards within. It is difficult if not impossible to tell who contributed what to the gorgeous textures and atmospheres. Starting with Cavity of Liquids, immediately we are treated to a feast for the ears as soothing walls of sound wash over the listener. This abstract sound painting includes hints of crickets, sounds vaguely suggestive of water, and deep otherworldly echoes. There is no melody, no rhythm. The feeling is cool, relaxed. There is darkness, but there is warmth as well. Can it be both cool and warm? Yes, it can. Ecopoiesis moves into a deeper fuller drone, but with interesting background noises skittering lightly about. Like Steve's Possible Planet, this track creates a unique, alien world. Texture Wall is brighter, with smooth metallic resonance. The night sounds move forward in the mix, and we spend the next 28 minutes immersed in the artificially formed yet highly organic environment. Paraterra wraps things up with more of the same, yet different. One of the best ambient albums of 2006. Phil Derby
Chain D.L.K. October 30 2006
I had not previously heard Loren Nerell's work, but Steve Roach should need no introduction. Here's how the Soleilmoon website describes it: "Heavily textured and mood altering, the long uninterrupted flow seemingly slows time down by way of the surreal dark ambient soundforms found in much of Roach's work. Nerell brings the steamy, evanescent blend of his mutated Indonesian sources, a signature sound that defines his previous releases for Amplexus, Side Effects and Soleilmoon." This is an interesting mix. The drones are familiar it's what I expect from Steve Roach. But there is a lot happening beneath the surface (that I assume is the work of Nerell) which adds a lot more complexity than I am used to hearing in Roach's work. The tracks bleed into each other, providing a good sense of continuity. And at almost 74 minutes, there is plenty of time to sink into the atmosphere. Overall, I am partial to the first two tracks on the disc, Cavity of Liquids and Ecopoiesis, which comprise about half the disc. The atmosphere is engaging, if not overly challenging. Sounds like there are natural sound source material woven in like crickets chirping, for example. Long drones with sounds emerging at times, only to resubmerge back into the sea of drones. Next up, we have Texture Wall, which, weighing in at over 28 minutes is the longest track on the album. It is also a shift in the feel of the disc. There are moments of sparseness that contrast with the complex, almost busy feel of the two preceeding tracks. But still, there are moments of underlying activity that keep it interesting. Paraterra is a nice conclusion to the disc, but by the time we reach it, Texture Wall had made the music fade into the background of whatever you were doing. The disc comes in DVD digipack packaging with postcards The artwork seems to be slot canyon stone imagery. Overall, this is a good release. Recommended. eskaton
KZSU Zookeeper Online December 19, 2006
Old school "space music", dreamy electronic soundscapes. Four long tracks of chill hypnotic computer generated ambience, like something found in a planetarium or the soundtrack to a Nova special on deep space. Except this is certainly organic, anchored in terra as all tracks have crickets chirping and a definate essence of a night in the woods or on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. For fans of Eno, Hassell, Harold Budd, early 80's NPR "Music From the Hearts of Space". Really sublime, beautiful stuff.(music geek warning for the following:) Roach is old school, an early inventor of this genre, a genre invented in the early 80's using newly available computer technology. Distilled from progenitors who used tape like Cage and Reilly, music that was originally (ironically) defined as "electronic music" (pre-1980), this type of "space music" was mostly limited to Music Departments of Universities, the few institutions able to afford such computers and software, packages that started at around $40K at the time. This genre was quickly bastardized around 1985, becoming known as "New Age" music, but its heart and soul remains quality mind numbing stuff, as can be found in this CD.
(choose any)
1) [Cavity of Liquids] beautiful evolution of "space" electronic chill over night-time, essence of a night in the forest
2) [Ecopoiesis] slightly darker, pensive space somehow
3) [Texture Wall] begins dark but has elements of brightness, higher freqs
4) [Paraterra] another darker one, slowly flowing, better than Vicoden
E/I Magazine March 2007
On Terraform, in cahoots with fellow sonic archaeologist Loren Nerell, Roach jettisons bitmapped machine music for a wondrously alchemical foray into topographical incognita. Both artists not only demonstrate muses in alignment, they seem to intuitively expound upon, and allow to proliferate, vivid ecosystems of sound. Nerell, though not the most prolific of musicians (releasing just a handful of discs in two decades), is adept at capturing life in aural snapshot, noted most tellingly on his Lilin Dewa album and the life-in-montage found on Indonesian Soundscapes, artfully spliced together out of indigenous field recordings. It's a sure bet Nerell's responsible for the more "corporeal" elements on Terraform, notably the cricketchurp underbelly buffering the opener Cavity of Liquids; however, the delineation of responsibility in such an expertly constructed album as this one is all but moot. Teeming Roachian soundworlds are steadfastedly in place, and both artists' contributions make for a mysterious yet seamless whole, but of the many collaborations Roach has undertaken through the years this one seems the most considered -- not a single sound or concept is ill-placed or haphazardly selected. The end result makes for heady listening: the trilling phrases, rubbed echoes and pre-dawn activities informing Ecopoiesis could well soundtrack an Aztec hoedown, while the twenty-eight minute morass of corrugated drones that is Texture Wall makes for nervous rappelling indeed. Curiously, there's been some negative appraisals of Terraform in various ambient circles; amongst the flotsam of copyist redundancies and abject mimickry, it's bewildering that such critical myopia bobs to the surface. Naysayers be damned -- sitting comfortably on the drone throne, this one's the real deal. Darren Bergstein
Tokafi April 2007
Loren Nerell and Steve Roach have both been able to gather experience with using the world around us as inspiration for their art, so they know that recreating reality in the studio won't work: Nerell taped his Indonesian Soundscapes in 1999 and Roach, of course, has travelled the deserted rockscapes of Australia to come up with Dreamtime Return, an album now considered a milestone and a classic. In both cases, though, what you heard wasn't a 1:1 conversion of their journeys, but the aural representation of a multisensory experience. So, for Terraform, they have instead opted for building a galaxy from scratch.
It has resulted in being a place of incredible warmness, borderless vastitude, sudden atmospheric swings, wordless spirituality and of many different colors turning in slow motion like shimmering grains of sand inside an infinite kaleidoscope. For most of their duration, these pieces do not want to "go" anywhere, they just "are", existing and breathing in all of the detailed richness of a physical landscape, allowing the gaze of the listener to stray and inspect its structures, from the purple-tinged horizon, to the dense brushwoods of its rainforest and the lifelines of its lush and moistous green leaves. There is a sound of crickets running through almost all tracks like a beacon, assuring the wanderer of the safety of his trajectory by its presence and warning him inside the cavernous wastelands of its absence. Of course, all of these animal allusions, all of the noises, all of the swelling and congesting pads and liquid resonances are all highly artificial once you start observing their characteristics in an intellectual fashion, there is not the slightest doubt that this is not a field recording, but in fact a collage of synthesized harmonies and effects. And yet it is this very unnaturalness which makes 30-minute long dreamstates like Texture Wall appear so "real" and three-dimensional; it is their approximational personality which allows one to take a step back from the immediate surroundings of the material world and enter the Ecopoiesis of Roach and Nerell. The mind closes the gaps the artists have consciously left behind in their trail, like wormholes into the wave-like majesty of the equally disturbing artwork by fellow musician Brian Parnham.
You can of course perceive the darker moments of Terraform as a more eloquent form of Dark Ambient, but it is not a certain mood this album is after, but rather a mental state. When the usual laws of development are suspended, when time is left to linger and each musical motive is self-referential, everything takes on a new importance and realness. The worlds Nerell and Roach have built may not exist on any map. But their impact goes well beyond what can merely be perceived with one's ears. Tobias Fischer
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