Desert Solitaire

Steve Roach,Kevin Braheny, andMichael Stearns have established themselves as conceptual innovators and major solo recording artists. These three synthesists collaborated for the first time onDesert Solitaire."The Southwest desert is inviting and intoxicatingly beautiful," said Roach, "but it is also dangerous and frightening. We wanted to capture the desert's timeless beauty, and we also wanted to create in sound the more visceral emotional experience of actually being there. The music contains some lovely desert imagery, but it also contains some of the desert's ominous, potentially lethal undertones. We were inspired by our personal experiences in the desert, by Edward Abbey's book, Desert Solitaire, and by Abbey's introduction to the Desert Images book, with photographs by David Muench. For us, this album is as much a tribute to Edward Abbey as it is to the desert itself."Roach, Braheny, and Stearns each play two solo compositions on Desert Solitaire. Roach and Stearns team up on three pieces, with Roach and Braheny working together on the title track.