Travelers' Cloth by Robert Rich

Inspired by David Hinton’s translations of T’ang dynasty Chinese poet Tu Fu, whose writing conveyed fundamental Taoist insights during a time of rebellion and chaos. Tu Fu was forced to wander for most of his life, in ill health and poverty, unable to return to his ancestral home. “Travelers’ Cloth” refers to the fabric of vibrating creation that surrounds us, the fabric of life that sustains us, the fragility of comfort and stability. This album explores a question, What is Home?

The final track in the download is a repeat of the entire album, flowing together continuously as I intend it. This version and the separated tracks are uploaded in full 2496 resolution (FLAC format) so be sure to take advantage of that resolution in your download selection if you can. You will find a CUE list in the Bonus Items, which you can use to import the track names into a player like VLC. You might need to edit the filename in the CUE file with a text editor, to match the name of the file after downloading.

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If you are interested in a 5.1 channel high resolution surround version, you can purchase surround downloads from Surround Music One: https://surroundmusic.one/album/travelers-cloth/

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Review by Chuck van Zyl (Stars' End)

Travelers' Cloth (64'40") finds Robert Rich again discovering, and then following possibilities. Out of an intense creative ferment come nine novel nomadic tracks. Evoking mental pictures, Rich's is a mind music which enters always through the heart. Executed using the seasoned skill his audience has come to appreciate, he transforms the natural emanations of flute, piano and guitar into something else, something foreign, something more ethereal. Once surrendering to these quietly captivating formations we may feel their beauty and glow. Wherever synthetic sonorities surround groupings of acoustic sounds and instruments, we cross into the land within the artist. Further away, the motive power of trekking drums provides a propulsive, finely detailed drift into myth. As digital samples mix with percussion, and a glissando guitar glides across notes, synthesizer tones respire beneath a distant, heaving atmosphere. The listener, now traveler, dreams over the great distance of imagination, to rest upon timeless textures of timbre. Our thoughts follow this music into a welcoming aural realm of ideas - reprieved briefly from the life sentence of a grinding world. Rendered as a euphoric, many-splendored journey of fleeting moments and sonic pleasures, Travelers' Cloth revels in the flowing motion associated with living things. Robert Rich's music has life, has unique and subjective focus, concept, context and point of view. Made in the age of machines, yet fully human, there is plenty here for us to treasure.

- Chuck van Zyl - 4 May 2023

Robert Rich has helped define ambient and electronic music, with over 50 albums across five decades. Rich began building his own analog modular synthesizers in 1976, when he was 13, and later studied computer music at Stanford's CCRMA while researching lucid dreaming. Rich performs and lectures worldwide. His all-night Sleep Concerts have become legendary.

robertrich.com