Robert Rich & Ian Boddy — React
The album opens up with the eerier & atmospheric Depth charge which bleeds slowly into life built around expanding aquatic and spacey synth tones, electrified lapping sea tones, buoy like bell tones and a growing grand dark harmonic string like Hoover- it feels like the approaching of something majestic, vast, powerful and dark. The track Ice fields is up next and kicks in with some atmospheric beat work that later builds up quite a pace, edgy bass synth lines and great mystic yet darkly hued guitar soloing and textures by Rich. Then we're in to the calmer through still shadowy waters of the track Sojourn which sees Rich’s rich harmonic trail of flute playing uncurl in ancient wonder and Boddy aptly/ ubtle adding in spacey synth sounds, harmonic patterns. As you can see from the first three tracks the pair cover a lot of ground with-in the ambient/ electroinca genre with the rest of the album showing equal amount variation, tone and texturewith the tracks nicely melting into each other so this works perfectly as one long 60 plus minute trip.
You’re always guaranteed class, quality and really sonic depth with anything involved with Rich's name and React does not disappoint. This is the first I’ve heard of Boddy’s work and it’s certainly made me want to hunt down more, the pair really work wonderfully together and it’s made all the more impressive by this been a live recording from summer last year, though you wouldn’t know with the high quality of sound and production- simply put a great, creative and varied slice of electronic music.