Robert Rich - ALBUMS
	Mycosphere 8 tracks Running time: 1:19:42 Released: 03/2009 $9.99 $11.24	Live Archive Volume 7 Mycosphere: Live on KFJC, May 31 2008 A radio performance for Day of Drone, where Robert explores the slow depths with abstract organic soundscapes and glurp. New music. My relationship with radio station KFJC goes back to the mid '70s, when as a teenager I began to hear crazy new music emanating from this local Bay Area college station. KFJC opened my ears to punk and industrial, outside jazz, progressive and space-rock. I performed my very first live concert on the air at KFJC in November of 1980, with my band Quote Unquote. I was 17 years old. Since... more info Mycosphere Part 4
	Lumin 7 tracks Running time: 1:03:47 Released: 03/2009 $9.99 $11.24	Live Archive Volume 6 Lumin: Live at Camerawork, March 6 2008 A shimmering improvisatory sound environment, where harmonics blur into waves of pure abstraction, performed live with multiple projections of films by Paul Clipson. New music. This recording documents the audio portion of my collaboration with filmmaker Paul Clipson, a one hour performance with multiple projections and improvised music. We presented this event at the Camerawork Gallery in San Francisco, to a full house of about 80 people. The musical performance was unique and abstract, attempting to complement the shimmering organic flow of Paul's luminous imagery. This convergence of media owes no small... more info Lumin Part 1
	Live at Cowell Theater 13 tracks Running time: 1:43:49 Released: 03/2009 $9.99 $11.24	Live Archive Volume 5 Live at Cowell Theater, San Francisco, May 12 2002 A wide-ranging planetarium concert that opens with modular analog sequences and moves into pieces from Outpost, Bestiary and '90s Fathom-era material. When Maer Israel promoted my concert at Morrison Planetarium in December 2001 (Alien Zoology) we had to turn people away at the door because the show sold out. Maer decided to search for a larger venue to put on another show six months later. He found the beautiful Cowell Theater at Fort Mason, perched on a pier over the bay at the northern tip of the San Francisco peninsula.... more info Mosaic
	Alien Zoology 11 tracks Running time: 1:28:45 Released: 03/2009 $9.99 $11.24	Live Archive Volume 4 Alien Zoology: Live at Morrison Planetarium, San Francisco, December 9 2001 A wide-ranging planetarium concert that opens with modular analog sequences and moves into pieces from Outpost, Bestiary and '90s Fathom-era material. Maer Israel contacted me in the late 1990's, and we met for lunch near my home to discuss his plans to invigorate the Bay Area ambient music scene with live concerts, internet radio and a collective of collaboratively minded artists. I loved his enthusiasm, although I cautioned him about the low chances for financial gain. A couple years later, he invited me to perform a concert at... more info Morrison Cycles
	Shamballa 8 tracks Running time: 1:05:21 Released: 03/2009 $9.99 $11.24	Live Archive Volume 3 Shamballa: Live in Costa Mesa CA, May 20 2000 A dynamic live concert from the era of Humidity, blending moments of pure sonic improvisation with melodic pieces from the Fathom-era catalog. In the mid-1990's, Daniel Bremmer was music director at KUCI in Irvine. He became one of my best allies in Southern California after he convinced me to start playing sleep concerts again, but on radio instead of in person. He scheduled an entire night for the event on KUCI and promoted it actively. The resulting good experience convinced me to play about 30 radio sleep concerts around North... more info Guitar Harmonics
	Due Acque 7 tracks Running time: 1:11:12 Released: 03/2009 $9.99 $11.24	Live Archive Volume 2 Due Acque: Live in Umbria Italy, April 1 2000 A deep ambient journey performed at a private concert in Italy for fans of Robert's slowest and most introspective music, previously unreleased. I performed this improvised journey for a private audience in Umbria, Italy in 2000. The timbre of the concert slightly resembled my music during the era of Trances & Drones and Inner Landscapes, but with some of the tools that allow the thicker harmonic excursions such as on Calling Down the Sky. This very special event contained a focused warm energy that resonated for days. I first met Gianluigi... more info Due Acque Part 1
	Ici et Maintenant 19 tracks Running time: 2:39:02 Released: 03/2009 $9.99 $11.24	Live Archive Volume 1 Ici et Maintenant: Live in Paris, May 12 1989 From Robert's early Geometry and Rainforest period, with hours of previously unreleased music. Melodic sequencers with swift patterned keyboard improvisation, melting down into slow looping textures and flutes. I tried to make the most out of very little during my 1989 European tour. This was my first chance to perform outside of North America, and few people knew my music. I had self-released my first three albums from 1981-1983. In 1984 Hans Fahlberg offered to release some of my music on his new label based in Sweden. At the time... more info Maintenant Part 5
	Electric Ladder 7 tracks Running time: 0:55:16 Released: 12/2006 $9.99 $11.24	On his 2006 release, Electric Ladder, Robert Rich finds a new voice for the vibrant interlocking melodies that characterized his works such as Numena, Geometry and Gaudí. With its seamless blend of analog modular synthesizers and acoustic tonalities, Electric Ladder weaves a hypnotic spell - lush, ecstatic and seductive. Its shimmering geometric lines grow more sharply etched with the clarity of justly tuned instruments and the intelligence that pervades Rich's compositional vocabulary. more info Electric Ladder
	Echo of Small Things 9 tracks Running time: 1:01:14 Released: 07/2005 $9.99 $11.99	Review from Wind and Wire by Bill Binkelman Okay, just go ahead and color me "awestruck" by this latest effort from Robert Rich. I thought Calling Down the Sky was a great immersive textural ambient experience (and it is), but Echo of Small Things takes Rich's talent for crafting evocative atmospheric ambient tone poems to an almost dizzying level. The integration of assorted environmental sounds (someone walking, the happy gurgling of a baby, nocturnal creatures, rain, wind and thunder) with constantly evolving layers of assorted electro organic musical elements is so flawless, so perfect, and so involving that I always found myself... more info Pathways
	Calling Down the Sky 8 tracks Running time: 1:14:00 Released: 10/2003 $9.99 $11.99	This 74 minute live recording documents an entirely improvised concert in Denver CO, on Saturday July 26, 2003, with an intimate audience who came prepared for anything. With a thunderstorm forming outside, breaking to a peak mid-concert, this improvisation refered directly to the recent weather I had experienced on tour that summer. Below are two journal entries that might flesh out the meaning of the cover artwork, visually interpreted by John Bergin. Tuesday June 10 - East of Oklahoma City I'm watching a giant storm cell bubbling to the south. My position eastbound on I-40 is perfect, at the edge of the... more info Erasing Traces
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With over thirty albums since 1982, Robert Rich has helped define the genres of ambient music, dark-ambient, tribal and trance, yet his music remains hard to categorize. Part of his unique sound comes from using home-made acoustic and electronic instruments, microtonal tunings, computer-based signal processing, chaotic systems and feedback networks. Rich began building his own analog synthesizers in 1976, when he was 13 years old, and later studied for a year at Stanford's Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA).

Rich released his first album Sunyata in 1982. Most of his subsequent recordings came out in Europe until 1989, when Rich began a string of critically acclaimed releases for Fathom/Hearts of Space, including Rainforest (1989), Gaudí (1991), Propagation (1994) and Seven Veils (1998). His two collaborations with Steve Roach, Strata (1990) and Soma (1992), both charted for several months in Billboard. Other respected collaborations include Stalker (1995 with B. Lustmord), Fissures (1997 with Alio Die) and Outpost (2002 with Ian Boddy.) Rich's contributions to multi-artist compilations have been collected on his solo albums A Troubled Resting Place (1996) and Below Zero (1998). He also records with his group, Amoeba, exploring atmospheric songcraft on their CDs Watchful (1997) and Pivot (2000). Live albums such as Calling Down the Sky (2004) and 3-CD Humidity (2000) document the unique improvised flow of his recent performances.

Rich has performed in caves, cathedrals, planetaria, art galleries and concert halls throughout Europe and North America. His all-night Sleep Concerts, first performed in 1982, became legendary in the San Francisco area. In 1996 he revived his all-night concert format, playing Sleep Concerts for live and radio audiences across the U.S. during a three month tour. In 2001 Rich released the 7 hour DVD Somnium, a studio distillation of the Sleep Concert experience, possibly the longest continuous piece of music ever released.

Rich has designed sounds for television and film scores, including the films Pitch Black, Crazy Beautiful, Behind Enemy Lines and others. His musical score graces Yahia Mehamdi's documentary on worker's compensation, Thank You for your Patience. Rich has worked closely with electronic instrument manufacturers, and his sound design fills the preset libraries of Emu's Proteus 3 and Morpheus, Seer Systems' Reality, sampling disks Things that Go Bump in the Night, ACID Loop Library Liquid Planet, and the TimewARP2600 soft-synth by WayOutWare. Rich has written software for composers who work in just intonation, and he helped develop the MIDI microtuning specification, which was accepted as an industry standard. As mastering engineer, he has applied his ear to dozens of albums, and his studio was featured twice in Keyboard Magazine.

"Robert Rich's recordings are fast becoming recognized as pioneering works, having taken electronic music to previously unrealized levels of innovation."
Darren Bergstein, I/E

"A music-scape that oozes with primitive life, as if pulsing from the swamp itself. . . A time traveller searching for the aperture that looks back to Eden."
Calvin Ahlgren, SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE

"Countless, beautiful, diverse, intense, evocative, innovative, lavish, awesome soundscapes."
Jill Grant, INTERFACE MAGAZINE

"Nothing, not one note, seems out of place or contrived. . .A bright and attractive fusion of the ancient and the modern, a bold groundbreaking musical statement."
Ben Kettlewell, DREAMSWORD

"Like listening to sonic architecture. . . Rich's structures are geometrical, yet organic."
Linda Kohanov, PULSE!

"This is surely the stuff that fantasies are made of..."
P.J. Birosik, L.A. RESOURCES

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