Early Man
There are some musicians who don't feel bound by traditional  musical concerns like harmony, melody, and rhythm. Usually when those  concepts are ignored, the results are avant-garde abstraction or  aimless New Age meandering masquerading as meditation music. With Steve  Roach, however, something else happens. For more than a decade, he's  been exploring ever-deeper layers, mixing high-tech and primitive  instruments to reach a root sound, a primordial state of consciousness.Early Manwas originally released in 2000 as a limited edition  packaged between two slabs of gray slate, representing its antediluvian  origins. Now it's been released in a conventional package with an  additional disc of remix material. All the Roach signposts are there:  swampy textures merging electronics with heavily processed acoustic  sounds from rocks, bones, and shakers, and pulsing, almost subliminal  rhythms, when there are any grooves at all. The second disc remixes  material from the first, but being Steve Roach, don't expect any dance  beats. Instead, he goes even deeper and slower, morphing his sound  world in a somber psychedelic trance.--John Diliberto