Customer Reviews

Suspended Memories - Forgotten Gods

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The CD is worth hearing for "Mutual Tribes" alone. It's skimming across the surface of the primordial soup in a UFO with your soul being stretched and bent in all sorts of ways it wasn't meant to. This is one of the most extraordinary recordings I've ever heard, and really opening my ears to the work of Roach, Rich and their ilk. I'd previously dismissed such music as New Agey fluff, but there's absolutely nothing fluffy or silly about this work. The music is a vivid depiction of a timeless, and a brilliant collaboration between the three musicians. It's a sonic ayahuasca dream. A careful listen to the many tracks will reveal a great deal of understated, processed guitar work from Saiz, and it's one of the key atmosphere-setting sounds on the album. Overall, and outstanding recording. If you want innovative music that takes you places inside the dimly-lit, sticky, wet and warm parts of your lizard brain, this is it.

Ancestral, dreamlike, profound, this reunion of three electronic music wizards (Roach, Reyes, Saiz), is a percussion masterpiece! They create intoxicating soundworlds with an arsenal of percussion instruments: claypots, frame drums, rain sticks, etc. I particularly like the passage "Ritual Noise" for its brisk rain stick tempo and grand finale. The immersion into the vast sounds of "Forgotten Gods" can be a bit haunting at times with Reyes'syncopated vocals and flute harmonics. At other times, the shamanistic temperament of the music shifts to the softer terrains of dreams and melancholy. The overall structure of "Forgotten Gods" is well-balanced because polyrhythmic patterns alternate with serene electroacoustic passages. Perhaps the best moment to get lost in the fullness of your imagination is when you listen to "Distant Look". Feel your stare sweep across vast expanses as the piece starts with a nice acoustic guitar melody over some lush synthetizer layers. The strength of this album is the synergy between ancestral music instruments and spatial sound design: you can actually feel each artist's instrumentation nourish the whole project. I strongly recommend this CD for those who want to go deeper into the realm of ethno-ambient music.

Jorge Reyes and Steve Roach are the best combinations for either artist. Both artists are absolutely great on their own...when they play together although, something magical happens that cannot be described..I cant recomend this CD any higher...

Timeless. Impossible to believe almost 20 years have passed. A singular sound from Steve Roach's vast catalogue. There's something powerful, dark, but still uplifting in this one. I remember vividly writing screenplays and immersing in this sound in the early 90s. Times were hard then, but not nearly as crazed as today. I should have moved to the desert when I first heard Roach's music. That was my impulse.

From all the reviews I read on this cd I believed that there would be a LOT more percussion within its music. The first tune starts of great but after that the drums seem to vanish. I still enjoy the cd very much but am bummed that there's not that much percussion as advertised. Ah, well.......

1 1/2


This new age shamanist journey into the desert is, dare I say, dull, and certainly not without better articulation elsewhere- even from the same artist.

This album answers the question, what kind of music would you get if neandertal man had synthesizers? I imagine cavemen huddling next to a cliff overlooking a vast plain, playing to appease their gods, trying to make some sense out the universe they barely comprehend.