Album Notes

"Below Zero" tells a story of infinite distance, inhuman scale and deep time. It ranks among Rich's most foreboding and expansive works, with its vast surrealist soundscapes, clouds of shifting metallic overtones, indefinable mutations and sinuous threads of melting sonorities. It also represents a significant technical achievement, using sound design techniques that range from phase vocoding and granular synthesis, to open-loop feedback networks and chaotic electro-acoustic systems. Yet somehow within this isolated landscape of unfamiliar sounds, there shines the intense and melancholy sort of beauty that permeates Rich's singular sonic universe. Robert Rich has pioneered new worlds of ambient and electronic music for two decades. He studied computer music at Stanford's prestigious CCRMA while earning a degree in Psychology. In 1982 he first performed his legendary Sleep Concerts, all-night shows meant to sustain hypnogogic states in sleeping audiences. His 7-hour DVD Somnium may be the longest continuous piece of music ever released on any format. Rich has recorded two dozen influential albums, ranging from the slow deep ambience of Trances/Drones, to the electro-acoustic world music of Rainforest and Seven Veils, to shadowy cinematic excursions like Stalker and Bestiary. Rich has worked with Steve Roach, Lustmord, Graeme Revelle, David Torn, Alio Die, Paul Haslinger, Ian Boddy, Vidna Obmana, and others. His group, Amoeba, explores atmospheric songcraft on their two CDs, Watchful and Pivot. "The deep, ethereal soundscapes that Robert Rich creates don't engage you as much as they engulf you. Shimmering waves of sound pour from the speakers, transforming both space and time." Keyboard Magazine All of Rich's CDs are available directly from http://www.robertrich.com