Released
1995
Label
Fathom Records
Reviewed by
Kim Alexander
Contact
Fathom Records
P.O. Box 31321
San Francisco CA
94131
Email
Fathom
Visit
Fathom Records
P.O. Box 31321
San Francisco, CA
94131
Email
Fathom
Last Edit/Update
19 April, 1998
Robert Rich
B. Lustmord
Stalker
Track Listing
1. Elemental Trigger (6.46)
2. Synergistic Perceptions (10.59)
3. Hidden Refuge (9.36)
4. Delusion Fields (9.33)
5. Omnipresent Boundary (15.00)
6. Undulating Terrain (5.36)
7. A Point Of No Return (11.35)
Total Time: (68.25)
Fathom Record's trademark of "Sounding The Deep" is most certainly an
understatement when it comes to their release of Stalker -- a fantastic
journey through the best in dark ambient neo-science fiction thriller soundscape. Robert
Rich and B. Lustmord join together their sound sculpture expertise in eerie
and dramatic longwave drone synth-phonics and rich expansive haunting waxing and waning
drifts of post "new-age" work that captures the listener in a soft sonic event
of futuristic listening landscape.
Turn the lights to dim, relax and
let yourself float along with Rich and Lustmord as they encapsulate you
with their aural vision down the hypnotic path to the unknown with dense oscillating
movements of dark, and unsettling sonorous synth elements.
Excellent background music, as well
as excellent sounds for your undivided attention, Stalker is an event
your sound library should not be without.
Notes From Fathom
"A provocative contribution to the growing 'dark ambient' catalogue.
Fathom
artist Robert Rich joins underground sound design legend B.
Lustmord
(aka Brian Williams) for an extended journey inspired by the title and the
hypnotic minimalism of Andrei Tarkovisky's mesmerizing
future/fiction film Stalker. The album slowly reveals a psychoactive
soundscape of shape-shifting shadows, dense subharmonic massings,
subtle drone textures and ambiguous sound events lurking at the fringes of
perception." Online music reviewer David Spalding says
"Unlike the majority of Rich's previous work, this is a consistently
dark,
troubling vision ... an eerie, unnatural fantasia that borders on the sinister.
The various movements flow one into another like a forward march to the
center of the unknown, take the listener past scenes of edginess and loss,
a haunted landscape punctuated by echoes. Stalker is a poetic trip into
another dimension, both macabre and transcendent."
---Fathom Press Material
More about the music...
NOTES BY DEAN SUZUKI
The seemingly unlikely pairing of Robert Rich, he of slow, gradually evolving
electronic music, and B. Lustmord, creator of doomy, ambient industrial
experiments, has yielded a sublime musical entity known as Stalker. Having
found a middle ground, it integrates Rich's intelligent ambient style and
Lustmord's more threatening, even horrific industrial sound.
Though their fundamental aesthetics might seem at odds, the joining of
forces has yielded a synergistic whole which transcends
their individual genius.
Stalker derives its title from the classic philosophical film of the same
name by Andrei Tarkovsky. Yet this visionary music is not intended
to be a surrogate soundtrack. The music, in fact, makes few specific
references to the film. The two creations do, however, share the common
theme of a mysterious voyage. The film, set in an unidentified near future
and a familiar but unnamed locale, depicts a forbidden journey through "the
Zone," a region closed by government officials to all unauthorized personnel.
In the heart of the Zone, according to rumor, is a room where everyone's
most secret wish and desire will be fulfilled. The Stalker is a guide, one who takes those
who are willing to risk everything to the room at the center of
the Zone. Using no special effects or conventional gimmickry, Tarkovsky
creates haunting atmospheres by inference and subtle innuendo.
Likewise, this sonic creation by Lustmord and Rich takes the listener
through a similarly mystifying Zone.
This is music for aural exploration. The two composers create an alternate
reality, a unique territory from an unknown universe. Like Tarkovsky's film,
the music moves slowly and the subject matter is abstract.
Sonic events flow seamlessly, eluding identification. One of the few
familiar images is that of water, with its symbolic evanescence and transience.
While the music is not about "stalkers" or "serial killers," it has
the
same darkness and sinister foreboding implied by such terms. The music is
evocative, but never precise. Instead, the music invites the listeners to
participate in the creative process and find their own extra-musical vision.
This is a kind of head candy, a sound design project for the adventurous
listener. There are no hooks, no catchy melodies or danceable rhythms. New
ambient, but also much more. Psychoactive sound, a sonic expedition.