Steve Roach

A longstanding leader in contemporary electronic music, composer and multi-instrumentalist Steve Roach drew on the beauty and power of the earth's landscapes to create lush, meditative soundscapes influential on the emergence of ambient and trance.

A onetime professional motorbike racer, Roach taught himself to play synthesizer at the age of 20; debuting in 1982 with the album "Now" (r=19822), his early work was quite reminiscent of his inspirations, but with 1984's "Structures from Silence" (r=19891) his music began taking enormous strides. The album's expansive and mysterious atmosphere was inspired directly by the natural beauty of the southwestern U.S.

Inspired by the Peter Weir film The Last Wave, Roach journeyed to the Australian outback in 1988. Field recordings of aboriginal life inspired his acknowledged masterpiece, "Dreamtime Return" (r=15064). A year later, he teamed with percussionist Michael Shrieve and guitarist David Torn for "The Leaving Time" (m=29736), an experiment in ambient jazz.