1 	Black Sarabande 	2:43
2 	Stranger On The Lake 	5:58
3 	Wire Horses 	2:43
4 	Air Madeleine 	2:32
5 	Ghosts Of Blacker Dyke 	5:32
6 	Lady Lazarus 	2:00
7 	Arc Of Crows 	3:49
8 	Progressive Music 	2:41
9 	The Secret Life Of Air 	3:06
10 	Painted Serpent 	5:07
11 	Broken Symmetry 	2:39

Mastered By – Denis Blackham
Producer – Robert Haigh 

Depending on what release you discovered first, you might have believed there were two different Robert Haighs operating in the UK during the 1980s and ’90s. There was the pianist and composer who worked with Nurse With Wound and released elegant modern classical albums like 1987’s Valentine Out of Season. But what to make of the Robert Haigh behind the neck-whipping jungle breakbeats of the Omni Trio, a force throughout the drum ’n’ bass era in the UK? As that project drew to a close in the early 2000s, the more contemplative side of Haigh reemerged with a string of contemporary classical albums. They made for a perfect fit for New York’s Unseen Worlds label; his 2017 album Creatures of the Deep slotted well alongside pianists new and old, ranging from “Blue” Gene Tyranny to Lubomyr Melnyk to Leo Svirsky.

Haigh’s Black Sarabande explores terrain similar to Deep, mixing gorgeous piano melodies with a patina of electronics. But where that previous album evoked the properties of water, Sarabande feels grounded. It draws on Haigh’s childhood memories of UK coal country and the hardscrabble “pit village” of Worsbrough in South Yorkshire where he was raised. There’s a heavy atmosphere to these 11 tracks, never wholly enveloped in blackness but always threatened to tip over into it.

The opening title track is hushed, provoking comparisons to Harold Budd or Erik Satie. Yet as Haigh’s struck keys hover in space, they turn slightly discordant, like a chill settling into the skin. “Stranger on the Lake” strikes a balance between piano and electronics to luminous effect, its melody shadowed by ghostly overtones. Midway through, the ambient haze swells, and when it finally recedes, the piece is suffused with harp plucks and electronics, making you feel like you’ve left one piece behind and emerged in another one entirely.

Black Sarabande’s calm surface proves illusory the more listens you give it. Struck piano wires startle the surface of the otherwise-placid “Wire Horses”; a gush of strings arrives and just as quickly disappears into the woozy, fluttering ambience of “Painted Serpent.” There are moments when Haigh’s playing verges on silence, so that if you’re listening on earbuds, you might hear your own footsteps through the snow more loudly than the music. The gorgeous and brief “Air Madeleine” sounds as if you’re walking around a frozen pond in the countryside and seated next to Haigh on the creaky piano bench all at once, as imaginary a landscape (and interior) as anything Brian Eno could have conceived. ---Andy Beta, pitchfork.com

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1 	Portrait With Shadow 	2:04
2 	Koto Line 	6:38
3 	Secret Life Of Waves 	3:14
4 	Birds Of Cadence 	2:48
5 	Unfinished Minor 	2:49
6 	From The Mystery 	3:33
7 	Winter Ships 	3:21
8 	Sunken Pavilions 	7:14
9 	I Remember Phaedra 	5:10
10 	Autumn Fool 	2:04
11 	European Dusk 	2:05

All tracks written and produced by Robert Haigh 

A new album of piano driven ambient music from British composer Robert Haigh. Following in the path of his albums for the Japanese Siren label, Creatures of the Deep is an underground vantage of a meeting between the musical worlds of Harold Budd and Erik Satie. With a storied musical career that has ranged widely in style — from his industrial-avant-garde works on Nurse With Wound’s United Diaries label as SEMA to his legendary ambient drum and bass records as Omni Trio on Moving Shadow — Robert Haigh's work occupies a space between music and mystery. With Creatures of the Deep, Haigh is at the peak of his powers. Among noir, minimal, neo-classical landscapes are robust scatterings of bright reflection and a musical expression that is subtle and elusive yet uniquely Haigh’s in its voice and masterful execution. The closer we examine, the more is revealed, and the less is defined. ---unseenworlds.bandcamp.com

Robert Haigh’s latest piano-based album is his first for US-based label Unseen Worlds. It has a finely crafted pace with such richness and delicate variety that even the most languid and pristine tracks avoid the doldrums of melancholy.

Creatures of the Deep begins with “Portrait with Shadow,” a mesmerizing solo piano piece. With little apparent effort it plunges immediately into a sublime atmosphere which affected me long after its two minute duration. "Secret Life of Waves" and "Sunken Pavilions” have an eerie inevitability and something of the liquidity in the vast landscapes of Yves Tanguy—who was in the merchant navy and the son of a sea captain before becoming an abstract painter.

The whole record is a masterful construction, but here and there the music hits peaks of a soft yet intense ecstasy. "Birds of Cadence” sways back and forth as if notes were held aloft on winged messengers between Earth and Heaven. The track “Autumn Fool” recalls bits of Virginia Astley’s classic pastoral record “From Gardens Where We Feel Secure.” "I Remember Phaedra” had me straining to hear any echoes of the Tangerine Dream record of a similar name. Perhaps that is why, on first listen, I was absorbed in the dark tones and completely missed that it includes the tune of the traditional English folk song “Scarborough Fair.”

After listening to this new work, I plunged more into Robert Haigh’s back catalog. His approach to modern classical music has definite echoes of his jungle, drum and bass, dark ambient, and experimental work as—or with—Omni Trio, Sema, and Nurse With Wound. Picture a steam train running on a track parallel to an electric train. Beyond the differences in tempo and softness, there are similar stylistic loops, moods, and rhythms. As such, Creatures of The Deep is melodious and tuneful but the reflections and signals from his earlier work keeps it from being dull or mellow.

Haigh has said that composing at the piano imposes a discipline on the process which makes one "an instant minimalist” and that he is interested in exploring "the interface between the tonal and atonal." I know that the aforementioned “Portrait With Shadow” made me an instant fan and by the end of this album I was scurrying for more of his music. Comparisons are not necessary, but this record inhabits a place outside time—a quiet cave where Erik Satie once scratched marks on the stone, or Harold Budd left a footprint in the soil. Perhaps it is a deserted snow-covered train station where no one is checking tickets, or simply any place where a slight deviation in sound can be stunningly beautiful. ---Duncan Edwards, brainwashed.com

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A 	Empire Of Signs 	
B1 	Three Seasons Only 	
B2 	Two Feats Of Klee

Robert Haigh - piano
+
Sema - instruments

Anyone into drum & bass will know Robert Haigh from his nineties’ project, Omni Trio, but Haigh had a busy musical existence before that successful time. In 1980, he formed Truth Club and Fote, both exploring the industrial and funk genres, along with the creation of his own label, Le Rey Records. It was two years later, in 1982, that, in addition to working with Nurse With Wound on several projects, Sema was born. Between then and 1984, Haigh released four albums as SEMA: Notes from Underground, Theme from Hunger, Extract from Rosa Silber and Three Seasons Only.

When it came to SEMA, Haigh wanted to explore other musical urges, “…that catered for my love of minimal and ambient music. I started SEMA. But I didn’t want it just to be pretty background ambient music, I wanted it to also have a darker and discordant side to it. As I progressed I became more and more interested in composing for piano. I’ve always been a fan of Erik Satie, I was impressed with how he juxtaposed melody and discord — the tonal and atonal — in works such as the Six Gnossiennes and the Five Nocturnes. I’ve always enjoyed subverting what appears to be melodic material with atonal elements. This is still what I do to differing degrees.”

For those used to Omni Trio, Sema isn’t vastly different. The real difference was the introduction in to a whole new world of technology for SEMA. Haigh was like a kid alone in a toy shop, he had a whole new set of play-things, “All along, through that period, I continued to compose piano stuff. Some of it found its way into Omni Trio stuff. The original sketch for Renegade Snares was like a Philip Glass progression.”

Haigh’s works often use a growing tension, building blocks of piano wrapped around a fattening tone, helping to grow like the sun drawing up a rose from the soil. Haigh’s music sucks you into an often meditative state but he does so while keeping you alert. Unlike other productions of the same ilk, he never sends you to sleep. You want to see what’s over the next hill. ---theaudiophileman.com

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