Steve Roach -The Dreamtime Box (Dreamtime Return remaster + New Life Dreaming + Possible Planet)
After being disappointed with a lot of Roach’s recent work, I kept putting off getting the remaster of Dreamtime Return, or Dreamtime Return the box set as it is. I’m glad, mostly, that I went for it in the end as the remaster of the album in question is beautiful, there’s really never been any question that what comes out of the Timeroom sounds incredible atmospherically and in this case there’s nothing terribly different about the 2005 version, it just sounds deeper and richer. And this album for me feels almost connected to my nerve endings, for electronic music there were really few albums more important than this one. I think I even reviewed the reissue of this when it came out again on its original label with the color changed to red, the new Projekt version restores it back to its original blue.
The big risk was with the two companion CDs, both of which seem to have been created with Dreamtime Return in mind, perhaps as an homage of sorts. I’m particularly impressed with the New Life Dreaming disc, which really does sound like an appropriate look back. If there’s one thing really resonant about the original album, it’s a lot of the various solo spots, it’s almost hard to think of an ambient album with all that creative input and the album is all the better for it. Same with NLD, Jennifer Grais and Sam Rosenthal both add some nice accompaniment for the fade out.
I haven’t really waved onto Possible Planet yet, so I hope to have more to say about it later. The one thing really kind of bad about this set, is the cardboard + stamp box, it’s pretty ugly overall and seems, perhaps another experiment in packaging (as with the extremely cumbersome original Early man) gone awry. But the music, a classic of the 80s without peer and what appears to be too excellent accompanying lookbacks, makes that worth overlooking. Of course getting them all together is a bit cheaper in the long run, so perhaps it makes sense to go that way anyway.