A Meeting in Ambence: Michael Stearns & Robert Rich: The Echoes Interview
John Diliberto, Michael Stearns and Robert Rich
Today, two electronic musicians who were part of the original 1980s California new age and space music scenes. Michael Stearns and Robert Rich are icons of electronic music and have recorded their first album ever together, Reunion of Breath and Waves. And they did it in person face to face, synth to synth.
Robert Rich: I’ve been using a term for twenty-five plus years now that I refer to as embodiment, which, having lived my life in Silicon Valley until recently, getting extremely tired of the push towards virtualization going on in technology and feeling that to push back, one needs to find a language of physicality, of non-virtual non-virtuality. I think many of the problems that we’re entering into in our civilization has to do with a denunciation of physicality, a denunciation of our animal nature.
We hear some deep musical explorations when John Diliberto talks with Michael Stearns and Robert Rich. Michaels Stearns recordings like Planetary Unfolding, Chronos and Baraka are albums that influenced a generation. Robert Rich has a charted a singular course through electronic music traverses abstract realms, world fusion and electronic dreams from his breakthrough release, Rainforest through his seven-hour album inspired by his sleep concerts, Somnium to his recent CD of the Month, Travelers’ Cloth. Even though they travel in the same music circles and have known each other for 40 years, they’ve never recorded together until now and the results are a spectacular album, Reunion of Breath and Waves.
Subscribers to Echoes Online can listen now!
| Start Time | Artist | Song Title | Album | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Echoes Monday, July 20, 2026 – Program 2629A | |||||
| First Half Hour | |||||
| 0:01:00 | Michael Stearns and Robert Rich | Continuous Evolution | Reunion of Breath and Waves | ||
| 0:06:00 | KARYYN | FWD | Physics Universal Love Language (PULL) | ||
| 0:11:34 | Nightnoise | Morning In Madrid | A Different Shore | ||
| 0:16:34 | BALTHVS | Eternal Flow | Liminal Stages b/w Eternal Flow | ||
| 0:19:49 | Marissa Nadler | New Radiations | New Radiations | ||
| 0:23:57 | Unwed Sailor | Three Jewels | High Remembrance | ||
| 0:29:30 | Feldman & Tiley | Kind (excerpt) | Protomensch | ||
| Second Half Hour | |||||
| 0:30:00 | Interview: Michael Stearns & Robert Rich | ||||
| 0:45:59 | Michael Stearns and Robert Rich | Opening Sky | Reunion of Breath and Waves | ||
| 0:51:19 | Chad Lawson | Sacred Memory | Awakening the Stillness Within | ||
| 0:59:00 | Immersion | Change of Use (excerpt) | WTF??? | ||
| Third Half Hour | |||||
| 1:01:00 | Ladytron | In Blood | Paradises | ||
| 1:06:00 | David Helpling and Scott Reich | Shadows Stars and Dreams | Through the Thought Horizon | ||
| 1:11:25 | Beth Orton | Celestial Light | The Ground Above | ||
| 1:16:39 | Ludovico Einaudi | Experience – Live | The Summer Portraits Live | ||
| 1:23;!9 | Boards of Canada | Naraka | Inferno | ||
| 1:29:30 | Deepspace | High Precision Hydrocleansing Protocols (excerpt) | Water Planets | ||
| Fourth Half Hour | |||||
| 1:30:00 | Thomas Lemmer | Among the Stars We Fade | DREAMSCAPES II | ||
| 1:32:33 | Kinobe | Open Your Mind | Open Your Mind | ||
| 1:37:18 | Eartheater | Practical Amnesia | Heavenly Body: If I’m the Bottle You’re the Message | ||
| 1:40:56 | Unwed Sailor | West Coast Prism | High Remembrance | ||
| 1:45:36 | break | ||||
| 1:46:27 | Michael Whalen | Soft Geometry | Standing Near Infinity | ||
| 1:52:45 | Liminal Drifter | Aquatic Whisper | Cowboy Pilgrim | ||