Roche

Roche

Dawn Of The Next Cycle

100% Silk

Ben Winans’ work as Roche resists niches and deadzones, threading through various outer rings of electronic trance, proto-techno, and unnamed house. His latest logbook of tracks, Dawn Of The Next Cycle, spirals as deep as ever into red-eyed trips of pulsing, gaseous patterns, electric body music reflections on “a world at war, a world that is falling apart, or perhaps reforming.” Shades of tribal jack, slap bass, submerged disco, cyber club, and programmer haze interweave and evaporate; nebulous melodies swell and dissolve; cycles dawn and die. Adapt or collapse – both man and machine. Even more than on previous releases, here Winans wields an innerspace touch, sinuous and circular, heavy-lidded like a horizon line. It’s always darkest before the Dawn. Recorded in San Francisco, California and mastered by Matt Tammariello.

Roche

Stillhope

100% Silk

San Fran synth sensei Ben Winans, a.k.a. Roche, ventures further into his arcane hardware labyrinths on Stillhope, his second slab of mind-wired Pacific house for 100% Silk. As always, there’s a great sense of spaciousness and flow, coastal fog billowing around Alcatraz and over Land’s End, invisible currents taking control. “Stillhope” and “The Medicine” skew more toward the hazed and zen, cliffside smoke seances rendered through samplers and circuitry, percussion patterns ghosting under hidden lunar cycles, while “Change” brings back the bass, riding an acid-funked electric slide into a chorus of street soul chanting. Closer “Theme for Ikaros” leaves the Bay (and Earth) behind, a techno spy theme for hijacking a distant moon base, filtered arpeggios ramping the suspense against a steady stalker’s pulse until it all dissolves in dubby echoes, a stark clap and a sample whispering about “the essence of life.” Even in deepest space, there’s Stillhope.

Roche

A Night At The Haç

100% Silk

As Roche, Bay Area Balearic boy Ben Winans designs long nostalgic nights with no sign of morning.  On “A Night at the Haç,” his keys converse the epic dialogue of classic house thematics: high notes begging romantic love; low notes daring physical freedom. Acid alien gears turn “Insider Outsider” into pivotless progression, straight ahead until the record breaks. Side B sees “CG Vision” through a fish-eye lens, all underwater bubbles ’n’ submarine wubbles as the synthy sea swells. Finally, it’s hi-hats off to the FX channel in “Psycho Zombie Dreams,” a tunnel trauma of modulated raunch—seductive, intoxicating and mind-munching. Haç is Boss, now do the work.