Robert Rich

Robert Rich Biography

Robert Rich (born August 23, 1963) is an ambient musician and composer based in San Francisco, California, United States. With a musical career spanning three decades and over 30 albums, Robert Rich has helped define the genres of ambient music, dark ambient, tribal ambient and trance, yet his music remains hard to categorize. Part of his unique sound comes from using home-made acoustic and electronic instruments, microtonal harmonies, computer-based signal processing, chaotic systems and feedback networks. Rich began building his own analog synthesizers in 1976, when he was 13 years old, and later studied for a year at Stanford’s Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA). Rich released his first album "Sunyata" in 1982. Most of his subsequent recordings came out in Europe until 1989, when Rich began a string of critically acclaimed releases for Fathom/Hearts of Space, including "Rainforest" (1989), "Gaudí" (1991), "Propagation" (1994) and "Seven Veils" (1998). His two collaborations with Steve Roach, "Strata" (1990) and "Soma" (1992), both charted for several months in Billboard. Other respected collaborations include "Stalker" (1995 with Lustmord), "Fissures" (1997 with Alio Die) and "Outpost" (2002 with Ian Boddy). Rich's contributions to multi-artist compilations have been collected on his solo albums "A Troubled Resting Place" (1996) and "Below Zero" (1998). He also records with his group, Amoeba, exploring atmospheric songcraft on their CDs "Watchful" (1997) and "Pivot" (2000). Live albums such as "Calling Down the Sky" (2004) and 3-CD "Humidity" (2000) document the unique improvised flow of his recent performances. Rich has performed in caves, cathedrals, planetaria, art galleries and concert halls throughout Europe and North America. His all-night Sleep Concerts, first performed in 1982, became legendary in the San Francisco area. In 1996 he revived his all-night concert format, playing Sleep Concerts for live and radio audiences across the US during a three month tour. In 2001 Rich released the 7 hour DVD "Somnium", a studio distillation of the Sleep Concert experience, possibly the longest continuous piece of music ever released. Rich has designed sounds for television and film scores, including the films "Pitch Black", "Crazy Beautiful", "Behind Enemy Lines" and others. His musical score graces Yahia Mehamdi's documentary on worker's compensation, "Thank You for Your Patience". Rich has worked closely with electronic instrument manufacturers, and his sound design fills the preset libraries of Emu's Proteus 3 and Morpheus, Seer Systems' Reality, sampling disks Things that Go Bump in the Night, ACID Loop Library Liquid Planet, and the TimewARP2600 soft-synth by WayOutWare. Rich has written software for composers who work in just intonation, and he helped develop the MIDI microtuning specification, which was accepted as an industry standard. As mastering engineer, he has applied his ear to dozens of albums, and his studio was featured twice in Keyboard Magazine. Official site: http://www.robertrich.com