The Road Eternal

Steve Roach's 2011 collaboration with Erik Wøllo is in keeping with his work in general, unsurprisingly so — it's identifiably Roach almost from the start, harking back to some of his earliest days with the initial slow, steady swells and blissful tones of the title track, which opens the six-track disc and takes up nearly a third of its running time. As the song moves into a more active phase, though, the sense of Roach's continuity between the original explorations of 1970s synth pioneers and a wide new group of performers working in the field becomes clearer. Where many of those performers often push ominous undertones to the full nearly at all times, Roach is as content to let a sweeter side emerge, a recapturing of a certain utopian spirit that is too often lost or misunderstood. The remainder of the disc moves further into this sense of vast space and elegant contemplation and motion within it. It's not something unfamiliar with Roach at all, but given the distinctly doomier touches many of his releases around this time have shown, his efforts here with Wøllo seem almost to be a clear difference in intention at work. Thus, if "Depart at Sunrise" has something of the same lost and forlorn feeling as the start of Vangelis' score to Blade Runner, there's a calmer feeling as well — no sudden cracks of sound, instead favoring the same gentle pacing and slightly murky quirk. The steady half-lope/half-squelch of rhythm on "Travel by Moonlight" helps ground the disc in its own way, a sense of progression forward while the sky opens overhead, something the distant soft tones emphasize further. Meanwhile, the distant guitar notes of "Night Strands" conclude the album on a lovely note, another fine demonstration of the duo's abilities.