Home » Jazz Articles » Album Review » Steve Roach: Light Fantastic

194

Steve Roach: Light Fantastic

By

View read count
Steve Roach: Light Fantastic
The "Magnificent Void" jumps to light-speed with this electrifying new release by Steve Roach. He is using the same resources as his recent Body Electric including the technical and musical expertise of "Vir Unis," but as a solo production, Light Fantastic is quite different from the collaboration of Body Electric. At very first hearing, it is possible to hear the similarities between the two recordings, but very soon it becomes evident that Light Fantastic is not Body Electric II. While Body Electric was bumptious, raucous, and sometimes humorous, Light Fantastic is much more "serious."

Light Fantastic uses the most up-to-date developments in synthesized rhythm. These "fractal" rhythms - based on the same computer-driven mathematics which give us the now-familiar spiraling, branching psychedelic designs, speed by faster than any ordinary human percussionists could play them, and are picked up by our ears almost in a subconscious way.

But the fractal rhythms are only one characteristic of this futuristic album. More than any Roach album since Magnificent Void , Light Fantastic is explicitly "space" music. This is rigorous electronica, calling forth not cacti, sand, and mountains, but the blazing suns and quantum energies of space - as if the "black hole" of the Void had opened out into a "white hole" of streaming rays. It is drivingly fast, filled with headlong movement which propels you along at warp speed, the sonic equivalent of those movie special effects where all the stars converge into a scintillating blast of light.

This Roach album is so consistent with itself that it forms itself into almost a "symphonic" structure, as if it were one piece with six movements, rather than an album with six separate tracks. The dominant harmonies, for the most part, are Roach's highly abstract "tone clusters," laid down in various forms of synthesizer work. The only time where "conventional" harmonies show up are in track 3, "Reflecting Chamber," where Roach uses the Indian stringed instrument, the tamboura (played by Stefin Gordon). The abstract tonality of Light Fantastic (i.e. not much "melodic" material) needs many hearings before its reason and structure can register on a listener's mind. This is not the "rock musician" or the "quiet friend" of some of Roach's other, more accessible albums. This is the "philosophical" Roach who, paradoxically, adds intellectual content to ambient music. As such it is one of Roach's most ambitious and powerful albums to date.

Personnel

Steve Roach
trumpet

Album information

Title: Light Fantastic | Year Released: 2000 | Record Label: Hearts of Space

Tags

Comments


PREVIOUS / NEXT




Support All About Jazz

Get the Jazz Near You newsletter All About Jazz has been a pillar of jazz since 1995, championing it as an art form and, more importantly, supporting the musicians who make it. Our enduring commitment has made "AAJ" one of the most culturally important websites of its kind, read by hundreds of thousands of fans, musicians and industry figures every month.

Go Ad Free!

To maintain our platform while developing new means to foster jazz discovery and connectivity, we need your help. You can become a sustaining member for as little as $20 and in return, we'll immediately hide those pesky ads plus provide access to future articles for a full year. This winning combination vastly improves your AAJ experience and allow us to vigorously build on the pioneering work we first started in 1995. So enjoy an ad-free AAJ experience and help us remain a positive beacon for jazz by making a donation today.

More

Tramonto
John Taylor
Ki
Natsuki Tamura / Satoko Fujii
Duality Pt: 02
Dom Franks' Strayhorn
The Sound of Raspberry
Tatsuya Yoshida / Martín Escalante

Popular

Old Home/New Home
The Brian Martin Big Band
My Ideal
Sam Dillon
Ecliptic
Shifa شفاء - Rachel Musson, Pat Thomas, Mark Sanders
Lado B Brazilian Project 2
Catina DeLuna & Otmaro Ruíz

Get more of a good thing!

Our weekly newsletter highlights our top stories, our special offers, and upcoming jazz events near you.

Install All About Jazz

iOS Instructions:

To install this app, follow these steps:

All About Jazz would like to send you notifications

Notifications include timely alerts to content of interest, such as articles, reviews, new features, and more. These can be configured in Settings.