Album Notes

"Outpost" is the first collaboration between British synthesist Ian Boddy and American recording artist Robert Rich. Both Boddy & Rich have been involved in electronic music for over twenty years but have travelled very different musical paths. Rich is best known for his many releases on the Hearts of Space, Hypnos and Release/Relapse labels. Boddy's numerous electronic albums on his Something Else Records label garnered respect throughout Europe during this same period. Ian Boddy launched the DiN label in 1999 in order to stretch the boundaries of contemporary electronica, and has released a series of exceptional limited edition releases including several of his own solo and collaborative albums.

Together, Rich and Boddy have concocted a mysterious blend of fluid electronic rhythms and impressionistic 50's Sci-Fi soundscapes. With tools ranging from vintage and modern analog modular synthesizers, prepared piano, metallic percussion, feedback networks, and digital signal processing, the two musicians have crafted a sonic journey to the remote edge of a future, lost civilization.

Unlike many other "virtual" long-distance collaborations, Boddy and Rich preferred to work together in the same space, allowing musical ideas to flow between them spontaneously. Boddy first travelled to California for a week, where he and Rich started recording "Outpost" in Rich's studio. A month later, Rich travelled to Northern England, where he and Boddy finished the album at DiN. Rich then completed the final mixing and mastering back at his Soundscape studio.

Full of surprising transitions and dynamic extremes, "Outpost" shows these two veteran recording artists stretching their music into new vocabularies. Four sections of the album feature pulsating rhythms from Rich's MOTM modular synthesizer. Boddy departs from his normally electronic voicings with abstract textural interludes on prepared piano, which he performed on the 1925 vintage baby grand in Rich's studio. Interwoven with NASA broadcasts, ionospheric radio whistlers, Boddy's extreme Metasynth excursions, and Rich's signature steel guitar, "Outpost" promises to take the listener to new sonic terrain.



(Review by TJ Norris, SoundVision) Outpost is the coming together of San Francisco's prolific ambient maestro Robert Rich and Britain's illusionistic synthesist Ian Boddy, both recording since the early '80s.  Ice Fields has an expansive sound with twinkling interludes of poppy tonalities which lead into the darker atonal Methane softening the space and changing the multi-colors to grayscale.  Its introspection is its key to the sequenced boundaries building slowly in Lagrange Point.  In this track we calmly travel at about 40 mph through barren land with only minute traces of life.  With the ample use of both vintage and modern electronics these two men have concocted a sterling debut that took them to each others countries to record. Dark atmospheres imbue tiny objects in its way, this is space-time travel. In Link Lost, which is the centerpiece of the disc, there is a quiet, distant music box evoking dreams of lost childhood and an impending, subtle, almost disconnected, tribal warning call.  Most of the recording is altered state inducing, classic ambient.  Edge of Nowhere drives a slow shifting bpm with soaring high tone drone and layers of mysterious siren calls.  Last Outpost aptly ties the whole journey together with its sensitive capture of leftover percussive abstractions and quietude, putting the listener to rest and letting them leave on their own voyage.  Known for his all-night Sleep Concerts, Rich has developed a psychically charged sound that prepares the body for rest, contemplation and various meditative states.  Having collaborated with like electronic artists such as Lustmord, Alio Die and Steve Roach, his collaboration with Ian Boddy seems like a natural choice, and a victorious end result.  DiN is Boddy's imprint, strictly set up to release limited edition contemporary electronica.