A DEEPER SILENCE

Sounding like the aftermath of a nuclear holocaust 'A Deeper Silence' displays all the qualities of Steve Roache's ability. Bleakness and beauty. Just the one long 74 minute track makes up this floating drone album. Beat-less, and with only the sound of keyboards you'd imagine you'd be in for a turgid forgettable experience.

You'd be wrong. 'A Deeper Silence' is one of the best electronic drone albums you'll hear. It's simplistic in approach and in execution. It's the manner in which it's done that raises one eyebrow like Roger Moore in James bond. Slow minimalistic, hazy waves at low volume permeate in the vein that you wish Klaus Schulze or Tangerine Dream would have done if they hadn't gone so awful after the 70's.

'A Deeper Silence' resembles the sounds of the outer edges of the solar system - where you look back at earth and see it as a tiny pin prick of light. Carl Sagan would have loved this. No beats, no rhythms where everything rises and fades into a billowing fog of darkness. It's a warm ethereal blackness that is at once disconcerting but at the same time relaxing.

''A Deeper Silence' seems to have no beginning or end. It all just merges into one huge atonal but beautiful structure that is so completely dark and quiet that you begin hearing waves as though lying on a beach. It's probably the most 'isolationist' of his recordings and may sound like a one man trip to the Sirius system in a spacecraft to some listeners.

Music without meaning. Just pure texture and sound, without anything to grab onto. Perfect in its genre and very difficult to review.