Disquiet

Generally speaking, the Disquiet Downstream is focused on and restricted to legal downloads of full tracks from musicians and record labels, which, often as not in this aural realm, are one in the same. Case in point Steve Roach, the longtime ethno-enivro-ambient musician who’s been self-releasing the majority of his records in recent years. Now, Roach has two new albums out this week, New Life Dreaming and Possible Planet, the former a return to the freeform soundscapes of his Dreamtime Return album (itself just reissued on Projekt) and the latter an experiment in ditching much of the digital toolset he’s employed of late, in favor of real-world sounds and reverberations. Roach has posted excerpts from each of the two albums’ combined eight tracks, but since many of those tracks are in the half-hour range, the excerpts themselves are long enough to stand on their own, each between just over two minutes to about four and a half. It’s a diverse patch of recordings, from didgeridoo warbles to rattlesnake percussion to synth waves to ambitiously rich drones. One keeper, for sure, is “First Murmer” (MP3), off Possible Planet, a modal slo-mo glottal undulation from the deep subconscious. Check them all out at steveroach.com.

By Marc Weidenbaum