****** - Verified Buyer
4.5
Been listening to BACK TO LIFE for about a month and it is really very good. Drifty, meandering, exotic, floating, dreamy but with tones of unwanted dreams. Nothing creepy, but interesting. That layering and repetition he does so well -- same yet forever changing, always pushing, shifting endless exploration -- it's fantastic here. In the second disc, which is the more powerful, he uses the sound of helicopter rotors, and it works! In places it's like some relentless wild demon flight. Yet I work to this music. I am a self-employed creative writer, I work in solitary, have for decades, and music is important to both my sanity and productivity. I cannot work to music with lyrics because the words in the songs interfere with the words going through my head. So I rely on ambient (New Age is a category name I personally reject) and Roach's music is primary in my collection. I could give you list of Roach's stuff, from DREAMTIME RETURN (one of his earliest; buy it if you don't have it) to EARLY MAN to the more recent ROAD ETERNAL and many others (though not all, I caution) and it would be impossible for me to tell you which was the "best." To ask which is the best is an irrelevant and useless question. If you like ambient, if you have a need for it, as I do, BACK TO LIFE is solid Steve. - JC
