Numena + Geometry

This Fathom reissue of two early Robert Rich releases makes a handy companion to the composer's more fully formed recent work (particularly the dark ambient albums A Troubled Resting Place and Stalker). Although the albums are very different from one another, their respective foci — Numena's psycho-acoustical organicism, Geometry's sense of melodic symmetry and balance — combine as the two guiding principles of most of Rich's composing throughout his career. As a whole, Geometry has aged the least gracefully of the two, inflected as it is with a by now new age-y melodicism that detracts from the less specific grouping of the album's lush textural support. Numena, however, sounds as focused and exploratory as it did when it was recorded; remarkable, since over a decade has passed.