STRUCTURES FROM SILENCE 1984/2024
Celebrating 40 Years of Sonic Serenity
We are incredibly excited to present you this very special event to celebrate the 40th anniversary of a musical masterpiece that has transcended the boundaries of time and genre and has left an indelible mark on ambient music: Steve Roach’s “Structures from Silence.”
Released in 1984, this work is an auditory journey through time and space that continues to mesmerise and inspire listeners worldwide with its ethereal beauty and sonic innovation, a timeless testament to the power of music to transport us to otherworldly realms.
Roach’s groundbreaking work in ‘Structures from Silence’ not only pushed the boundaries of electronic music but also challenged the very essence of what music could be. The album’s delicate interplay of synthesisers and its minimalist approach created an atmosphere that was both ethereal and meditative, creating an immersive world of sound.
The vast, open desert landscapes of the American Southwest served as a wellspring of inspiration for Roach during the creation of this album. Roach’s compositions effortlessly captures the sense of space and tranquillity that permeates these arid lands, reflecting the vastness and serenity of these environments.
As we celebrate the 40th anniversary of this milestone in ambient music history, it is remarkable how the album maintains its resonance: its impact extends far beyond the boundaries of conventional music; it reminds us that music, in its purest form, is a transcendent experience that resonates across generations.
History of a Masterpiece
Roach’s music is part of a wider progressive, electronic-ambient movement that rose concurrently with the new age scene on America’s West Coast during the 1970s and 80s. Initially the pathway to the audience was neither through an artist nor a record label, but a radio show: Music From The Hearts Of Space. This groundbreaking public radio program was founded in 1973 in San Francisco by sound designer, producer and former architect Stephen Hill and the late Anna Turner. In 1983 it went national and is still on the air today. Although it was not the only radio show of its type, its influence and importance cannot be overstated – both its role in the development of American-based electronic artists and the part it played in bringing ambient styles to a wider audience.
By the 1980s this California-based scene was rich with adventurous musicians giving birth to an extraordinary new direction in music. It was within this creative ferment that Structures From Silence was birthed. Roach says, “That time was exciting. All that mattered to me was living inside this soundworld I was discovering and wanting to share with those who were open to it. I was creating from a purely instinctual place; I had no concern of genres or boundaries.”
Radio was the medium of the day and was crucial to the album’s initial success in America. Structures was originally a self-released cassette when it caught Stephen Hill’s attention. He heard the album through his friendship with Michael Stearns and Kevin Braheny, two accomplished West Coast ambient composers who were living near Roach in L.A. at the time and helped him with mastering and spatial enhancements on the album.
“I remember right after it was released in 1984,” Roach says. “Stephen came to my tiny bungalow in L.A. near the MGM film studios – to see what this guy was all about. Those little gingerbread-looking houses were originally built in the 1940s for the workers at MGM a few blocks away. There was a vibrant beehive feeling all around with fellow visual artists, film and music people. My early albums from Now to Empetus were all created in that Timeroom (Roach’s official name for his studio) or perhaps better described as the Timewomb.”
Hill describes the meeting, “I vividly remember visiting him in that bungalow in Culver City, where he was living a monk-like existence. It was a stucco motel-looking place. The main room had been turned into an early Timeroom, with all his equipment set up and purring out fat analog waveforms 24/7. I don’t recall seeing a bed – he was probably sleeping in the studio – but there were two folding wooden chairs so I sat down and he offered me a glass of water. We had everything in common artistically, and we talked for hours.”
Roach laughs on hearing this, “Well if I slept, it was standing up or sitting at the Oberheim. Pretty much the same as now.”
From that encounter, big things grew. “The music was perfect for Hearts of Space,” says Hill, “and we used it on the national radio program immediately. The track ‘Quiet Friend’ became a kind of closing theme song for a while. This was before we started HOS Records, so I recommended he contact Ethan Edgecombe of Fortuna distribution who was building his own label. Ethan put it out right away on vinyl and cassette. That release on Fortuna helped Steve establish himself as an electronic artist to pay attention to. His raw talent and awesome work ethic did the rest.”
In 1987 a VHS video titled Structures from Silence was released. It featured imagery created by Marianne Dolan set to the album’s title track. This video was also released on laserdisc under the title Space Dreaming.
A 3-CD 30-year anniversary edition was released by Projekt in 2014. Steve went back to the original analog mixes for a 24/96k remaster by Howard Givens that reveals luscious quality and subtle tonal detail not heard since the 1984 master. “With today’s evolution of audiophile analog mastering tools,” Steve says, “we were able to reveal the original beauty, detail and essence-of-tone captured on the 30 ips analog master which has not been heard like this until now.”
In the same year the Quiet Friends tribute was released with sixteen electronic artists creating Structures-inspired pieces in honor of the album.
In late November 2014, Steve Roach was selected as Echoes Radio‘s #1 Artist and Structures from Silence was voted as the #2 album. FACT Magazine included the album among the 10 best album of the 80’s and released an extended article about the story of Structures. In 2016, Pitchfork listed it as the 33rd best ambient album of all time.
Structures From Silence is the album that brought Roach’s work to a global audience of listeners, radio broadcasters, fellow composers, music fans and deep listeners alike. The album has been praised over the years by magazines, fanzines, therapists, Yoga practitioners, and medical MDs; it continues to appear in best of polls, often topping current lists of all-time ambient albums. It struck a chord with a diverse cross-cultural audience from varied backgrounds. The epiphanies of Roach’s formative years of inspiration drawn from the desert and nature’s dreamtime found its way indelibly into his work and his unique personal voice. The stories continue to come in from around the world on how the album breathes life with original and new listeners.
In 2017 the album has been re-issued on vinyl by Canadian label Telephone Explosion Records and on cassette by Steve Roach’s Timeroom Editions. A new edition of the album is expected to be released in late 2023/early 2024.
Breathing the deep
The pieces on Structures From Silence evolved outside of the direct influence of the 1980s time zone in which it was created.
“My life at that time was purely focussed on drawing out an inner voice that had been building over many years: a feeling born from my immersion in the quiet spaces of the desert environment. My connection to the profound atmosphere of the desert areas of Southern California – Joshua Tree, Anza-Borrego, Death Valley, the Mojave Desert – was essential. I finally had my hands on the tools with which I could channel this feeling, this expansive atmosphere and blooming inner awareness. I was uncovering and discovering a palpable sense of stillness emanating from a soundcurrent of ‘silence.’”
One of the album’s extraordinary qualities is the sense of natural breath in the music, an organic quality not easily realized with synthesizers. These diaphanous chords and suspended harmonics would become the DNA of Roach’s music as he sought to release his machines from their mechanical moorings.
He explains, “I wasn’t hearing this quality in electronic music at that time. With an acoustic instrument you have to be 100% there to make a sound. Traditional instruments draw from the physical body’s interaction. With synthesizers emerging in the 80s, it was clear that you could almost stop breathing, lose the body connection, sit disconnected in a chair, and still manage to make sounds. This realization was a big piece of my entire waking and sleeping focus. I worked to deepen and nourish the connection to the essence of sound, body, mind and breath awareness when creating with synths. This was directly translated into Structures From Silence – conscious breathing, the sigh and the expansion of this place in-between. Creating from within this present moment, and playing that state through the analog warmth of the Oberheim OB8 was a sacrament of sound. The intention was direct and pure.”
The Oberheim OB8 synthesizer – the source of the resonate voice of the title track – had recently been designed and built in nearby Santa Monica, California. The new synth could play up to eight notes at once, making it the gold standard for polyphonic analog synths in the early 1980s. By his own admission Roach became utterly obsessed with owning one. Priced well beyond what the young sonic aspirant could afford from the wages of working at a local record store, he eventually secured the instrument with a very high interest loan. This consequential move would prove to have a long lasting impact in his life’s work.
The OB8 remains in regular use in his studio today. “You can buy a software version of this instrument now, but it’s like comparing a Formica-countertop laminate and a rich exotic wood. You can’t match the original in terms of texture, warmth and emotional impact, not to mention the fact that it’s a beautiful hardware instrument I feel drawn to today, in the same way as in 1983.”