Step into the Surreal: Michael Stearns & Robert Rich - Reunion of Breath & Waves Echoes August CD of the Month
by John Diliberto 8/1/2026
In the late 1970s and early ’80s, California was the epicenter of the burgeoning New Age movement. Artists like Richard Burmer, Kevin Braheny, Iasos, Steve Roach and Steven Halpern were exploring new electronic frontiers. Some, like Iasos and Halpern hung their crystals heavy on the new age banner, connecting their work to themes of interdimensional realms and music healing. Michael Stearns and Robert Rich took a different path. Their music shared the movement’s sense of wonder but pursued deeper, more personal artistic visions.
Stearns is best known for his soundtracks to IMAX films such as Baraka, Samsara and Chronos. His influential albums include the pioneering 1981 work Planetary Unfolding, whose reissue was also an Echoes CD of the Month.
Robert Rich has charted a singular course through electronic music, traversing abstract realms, world fusion and electronic dreams heard on albums such as
Rainforest, Propagation and Travelers’ Cloth.
These two artists have known each other for 40 years, but have never recorded together until now. And it was worth the wait. Reunion of Breath and Waves is enveloping; a shimmering sky of shape-shifting clouds, oceanic trenches of shuddering bass tones and soaring elliptical solos. They tap archetypal sounds old and new from the breath of PVC Indian-style flutes to the mechanized precision of German sequencers.
You can hear that last element on “Continuous Evolution”, a hypnotic sequencer driven track spun through filter sweeps and delays while alien insects seems to be scuttling on the fringes, clicking and clacking and squelching. It’s more like a high speed run through an extraterrestrial jungle. You just grab on as chromium synthesizer lights whoosh by.
You could stop the album right at the first track, “Opening Sky” and feel like you’ve just been on the ride of your life. It is the most perfectly structured track on the album. An opening pluck and drone like a raga slowly morphs into a meditative space before Rich starts wailing on the Haken Continuum keyboard, which allows continuous glissandos. A rapid fire, stuttering sequence lurches out of the background phasing in and out of warp as the piece accelerates to a thunder of taiko drums driving it to a close.
They tap an ambient Americana sound at the opening of “Your Own Path” with Stearns playing electric guitar, strumming some spare, lonesome prairie chords. With Rich’s PVC flutes it reminds me of Ry Cooder’s score to the 1981 movie, Southern Comfort which sounded like Paris, Texas meets Popol Vuh.
The range of influences subsumed in this mix is extraordinary. Indian music, space music, cinema, Balinese, Japanese and more. “Mist Lingers” has what sound like, but aren’t, acoustic strings being bowed in an insistent swirling pattern, redolent of the tremulous bowing of Gyorgy Ligeti’s “Atmospheres.”
“Unexpected Reply,” on the other hand, taps the minimalist sound of Steve Reich’s “Music for 18 Musicians.” Its over-lapping and delayed sequencer patterns drive it into a much more chaotic frame of slightly out of lock sequencers and joyful, clangorous noise. At one point it sounds like Stearns is tapping the acid rock guitar of his youth. It’s all the more surprising when it ends in a hymnal space: the relief after the turmoil.
“The Ground Remembers” is structured like a raga with an electronic tamboura drone, then a long alap by Rich on the Haken Continuum and subsequently being joined by Indian percussion. “Inclusions” follows that mood a bit, but in a much more trance-like rhythm that anchors distant hand bells, swirling synths, and flute choirs crossfading with celestial voices. It is an enveloping trip.
The album takes a darker turn on the title track. It’s a submersion in woofer-warping bass drones and the sound of an anchor chain dragged on the bottom of the ocean while Rich plays a violin-like threnody on his Haken Continuum. “The Deep Below”, shares a similar space, starting as a gentle descent before being sucked into the abyss.
There is an organic richness to “Reunion of Breath and Waves.” And that’s in full effect on “The Map is the Surface”. Stearns plays a repeated guitar phrase, over an organ-like drone while Rich solos freely on flute. Nature sounds burble through the background giving you the false sense that this is like a mystic campfire picking session. The track develops into something a little more ominous with each passing of its 13 minutes, as the synth drones turn into a nattering sequencer run. Rich switches to the Haken Continuum, although it could be the lap steel, delivering a feedback guitar like solo.
The album ends with “Vignet”, the gentlest track on the album with Stearns playing multiple guitars one of them played in tremolo, giving it a bit of a Venetian flair, with Rich’s mournful Haken Continuum solo mode.
Reunion of Breath and Waves isn’t a nostalgic meeting of two pioneers. It’s the sound of two mature artists discovering that four decades of parallel journeys have led them to the same destination. It has the rapture of their early years but transformed into a sound that is forward moving and mind-bending.
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Hear our interview with Michael Stearns & Robert Rich in the Echoes Podcast.