Soma

Soma

• Soma
• Rich/Roach
• Cd

Like the wild mushrooms that fungus enthusiast Robert Rich turns into gourmet dishes, the pieces on <I>Soma</I> seem to emanate directly from the ground, without belonging to any species hitherto defined. New Age? Nah. Ambient? Not exactly. Fungoid tribal trance? Maybe. Rich, the drone provocateur who invented the "sleep concert" in the early '80s, and Roach, proto-ambient pioneer whose <I>Dreamtime Return</I> remains a classic of organic New Age, distill a potent nectar of heartbeat-paced percussion--including rain sticks, clay water pots, kalimbas, and sequenced drums--and reverberant flutes, didgeridoos, and canyon-sized synthesizers. More rhythmically active than either the Roach-Vidna Obmana duet <I>Well of Souls</I> or early Roach electronica like <I>Traveller</I>, <I>Soma</I>--named for the Vedic potion said to deliver the drinker to God--is a Southwest vision quest that suggests Terence McKenna's psilocybin-mushroom theories: a connection to the very soul of the earth through ethno-botanical ingestion. Bottoms up... <I>--James Rotondi</I>