click here or on image to read and listen to this audio interview

robert rich is arguably one of the most important american composers. his work helped to define bay area electronic music culture and was at the forefront of important labels like hearts of space and hypnos. though rich himself finds it frustrating to be associated with new age music and thus new age culture. His contribution to the genre of slow, quiet atmospheric music that was emanating from the bay area in the 1980s is undeniable. his sound helped to define a generation of artists and helped to lead to the current aesthetic of quiet minimal music within the underground experimental musical culture.

rich is also the modern developer of the sleep concert, an idea that he attributes to the all night shamanic rituals of the archaic world. early in my process of curating the Sommeil remix experiment robert was a strong supporter of the idea and was amazingly open in sharing not only his idea but detailed information about how he realized these events, the culture surrounding them and the synthesis techniques he employed during the course of these monumental events. my favorite parts of our phone conversations included anecdotes about bay area culture in the 1980s and about our mutual friend naut humon.

one of the most interesting things about my talks with rich were stories about how people responded to sleep concerts and what to expect as the curator of such an event. without his help, Sommeil would have never become what it is today so i am grateful for his time and willingness to work with me conceptually on the project. if you are at all interested in the Sommeil project i urge you to support robert rich by purchasing some of this music.

in particular, i recommend that you pick up a copy of somnium rich’s album which explores over 7 hours material that was originally created for sleep concerts. rich also recommends picking up a copy of his live archive. he says about his live archive, “Seven concerts spanning twenty years of performance, over ten hours of music, available only in downloadable digital format. Each concert is available separately. This release comes on the 20th anniversary of the 1989 radio concert in Paris that forms the first of these downloads. Each concert appears mostly in its entirety, lightly edited by Robert to fit under 80 minutes per set when needed. A few technical glitches are repaired, but otherwise all the quirks of live performance remain.”

please take the time to listen to this fascinating interview with legendary ambient composer robert rich. simply click on the mp3 links and you will be able to hear his responses to my questions. i hope that this interview can serve as a reference point for other artists who in the future might choose to continue the tradition of the sleep concert.

click on image to download a pdf of the press release