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In a recent feature on The Wire, electronic artist Steve Roach said music is about “immersing in something that is changing your sense of time and your perception of ordinary states of reality.”
Dislodging a listener from the forward march of life has been a key goal of Roach’s work for the past four decades. His compositions are enveloping and patient, employing glistening synth melodies and extended drones that seem to stretch to the farthest reaches of the universe.
That was the image Roach evoked this past Saturday when he made a rare live appearance in Portland at the First Congregational United Church of Christ as part of a series of events put on by a promotion company known simply as Reflections. Though the clock on my phone put the duration of the performance at around two hours, my perception of the time was far different.
The set seemed simultaneously to fly by and to pleasantly go on forever. It was, at first, disorienting, but I eased into this wavelength quickly with the help of the colorful blobs and shimmering abstractions that visual artist Sean Hellfritsch projected on the church’s proscenium arch.
Roach worked with a similar mix of urgency and ease. He moved among his array of synthesizers, sequencers, and wind instruments quickly, but his hands teased sounds from them all with careful flowing actions. The smallest tweak of a knob or depression of the keys brought about enormous changes in each piece.
At the end of the set, Roach stepped off the stage to a lectern, where a small synth setup awaited. As he performed the title track of his pioneering album Structures From Silence, the clouds of melody melted into the air, dissolving past, present and future into one blissful state of pure existence.