Steve Roach - Dreamtime Return

This release could easily have been called "Selected Ambient Works BC", it's quite difficult to describe the beauty of it in words. The tracks are simple and minimal, but yet hit the nail on the head with perfect precision. "The Return" is just pure bliss. It's hard to believe that Roach used to be a professional motorbike racer!

Certainly one of the most important ambient releases of the last twenty-five years and most likely Roach's strongest and most representative work.

I remember the time and place I bought my copy (actually, my grandfather bought it for me), and, even after the first listen, it was nothing less than an introduction to a whole new world of sound and emotion. Dreamtime Return's effortless fusion of tribal and electronic instrumentation is ageless and doesn't sound at all dated, even on the neo-Berlin-School opener, "Toward the Dream," which gives me excited chills to this day. Each track blends seamlessly into the next and though this album is epic to say the least, it never becomes boring, static, or saccharine. The Aboriginal elements are tasteful and never exploitative like so many faux ethnic ambient and psy-trance releases from the early to mid-nineties.

I've been listening to this one for eleven years and it's always rich and powerful, the kind of music a person will live with for the rest of his or her life. An outstanding achievement.