We write 1988, Steve Roach just released Dreamtime Return and wrote with this album a whole new chapter in the history of electronic music. Practically in the history of ambient as Dreamtime Return is considered as the first real ambient record. Besides that it was the first real recording in which western music was mixed with aboriginal instruments as the dingeredoo. A culture totally unknown to the western audiences at that time. With these instrument the first steps into ambient where taken and Steve Roach gave his musical carrier a new turn.
Twenty years after the first release of Dreamtime Return the label Project comes with a re-issue of the album which was long sold out and hard to find for collectors. The original album went through a tiny re-mastering and they have given the cover a different (more suitable) colour, but it’s still the same album first released twenty years ago. Steve Roach is a name I’ve heard before, next to him stand people like Klaus Schulze and other masters of the electronic music. Although I’ve never bought or heard an album by his hand.
And now Dreamtime Return is playing in my cd-player. The first thing I noticed was the timelessness of Roach’s ambient. The first time I heard the album, even before I was searching the internet for information about the album, I’ve thought it was a brand new piece. Maybe the digeredoo’s were a bit simple, but the whole album breathed the dreamlike ambience which ambient is know for. I even dare to say it has everything an ambient-artist searches for al these years. You float away on dreams, feel the electronic atmospheres summoned and drift off in a period of peace and serenity. These thoughts were mine before I’ve found out this was a re-release of an album first released in 1988. now my interest for Steve Roach is complete awakened. There aren’t a lot of artist whose work still stand strong next to present day artists twenty years after the first release. Dreamtime Return is and will be the holy grail of ambient.
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