Review in Issue One of e|i magazine
This is a good deal more auteuristic than many are going to expect. Commencing with a gritty, muddy, cloudhung wasteland of wreckage, there's a clattering post-chaos theme that infects the farflung musical environment as dully as the bloodline of blame and regret that follows any lengthy vicious war. The tang of machines falling slowly apart rings and echoes through a humid air that carries streaks of icy breezes, oddly contrasting the rising steam and contrails from the moldering soli. Cisternic bloops limn a sweltering fog coercing claustrophobic borders in upon the mind. Trekking for miles through an increasingly hopeless terrarium, a beat arises from the vapors and fretful zephyrs, lamenting angels wail softly in the aether, and we increase our pace, anxious to reach a destination that invokes fear. But that expectation is doomed to it's own bleak hopelessness; the journey's endless and we may well be circling the final stages of an entropic breakdown. Rich and Boddy seem to have decided to walk away from much of their trademark sounds and draw up a finely articulated map of terran purgatory, taking cues from many sources (On Land, Sonic Seasonings, Blackdance, Apocalypse Now, etc.), pouring steam, sweat, and a perpetually dulled throb of pain into their commonly more idyllic paintings. The narrative of connected themes is notably linear and three-dimensional, obviously a concept cycle. There's also a strong flavor of futurized Loren Nerell pervading, but one that describes his rain forests after civilisation has had its raging way. Don't expect Boddy's lovely landscapes or Rich's brocaded travelogues; what you're in for is a midground that leans more to Soleilmoon than Hypnos. They may or may not repeat this, solo or in tandem, but this exposition is a rather radical departure point and may interest their followers purely on that one of many merits.

Marc S. Tucker

For more information about Robert Rich, visit his website at www.rrich.com

There is an on-line interview with Rich and Boddy at the Ambient Visions website.