FILAMENTS

In a perfect world, Tangerine Dream would have ended sounding this good!

Robert Rich-Filaments, 2015, is Progressive Electronic to the core, Berlin School in its bones, Contemporary Classic in its heart and environmental or Cosmic more than the usually misunderstood Ambient tagging, in its soul.

Perfection coming from a quiet unknown musician, even among the PE crowd. (Business as usual). Although it is quiet understandable, considering the inherent thinness and transparency of his musical structures from album to album, which will never outcome the disadvantage of a world of fast-noise.

Filaments consists of nine THICK individual musical structures. Each one travels its own route and direction. Each song is unique in its language and Robert Rich's personal style evolves between poles of electronic or contemporary music influences (TD & Steve Reich´s ones are quiet notable) , BUT transmuting them to his own self constructed musical idiom. The results are overwhelming opposite to my expectations. Speechless!

I have to confess, I was just expecting another Robert Rich's environmental album, to play along while I painted. I was completely wrong, this work deserves full attention to understand why it rates for me *****5 Masterwork PA stars.

Californian Robert Rich has been producing electronically generated music for well over 30 years (being part of over 46 album releases) yet this recent release, Filaments, has garnered a lot of attention from both within and without the prog and ambient/electronica communities. Like fellow Californian Thom Brennan, Filaments shows a little bit of an edgier side to Robert's music, challenging the long-time assertion/assumption that his place was as a leader in the sleep/dream/relaxation realm of the New Age musical movement. This music also shows a bit more individual instrumental flare and isolation than most other albums of his, making it feel much more fit to be included among the Progressive Rock music scene.

Five star songs: 2. "Majorana" (10:45) (9/10); 3. "Scintilla" (3:48) (10/10); 5. "Entangled" (10:54) (10/10); 6. "Eulalia" (5:44) (10/10); 7. "Laniakea" (3:54) (9/10), and; 8. "Ætherfolds" (3:54) (9/10).

Four star songs: 1. "Filaments" (4:58) (8/10); 4. "Ætherfields" (5:22) (8/10), and; "Telomere" (9:58) (8.5/10).

Five stars; a masterpiece of progressive electronic music.