Sunyata (album)

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Sunyata
Sunyata cover
Studio album by Robert Rich
Released 1982
Recorded Winter 1981 - 1982
Genre Ambient
Length 86:00
Label Soundscape Productions
Producer(s) Robert Rich
Professional reviews
Robert Rich chronology
Sunyata
(1982)
Trances
(1983)


Alternate cover
CD release, 2000.
CD release, 2000.

Sunyata (1982) is the debut album by the American ambient musician Robert Rich. The title refers to the Buddhist concept that all things in the material world are empty of meaning and independence.

This album was recorded during Rich’s studies at Stanford University. Its music is of a slower and more minimal format than most ambient music at that time. With an eighty-six minute running time, it is perhaps the only album to take full advantage of the length of the audio cassette format. The last track on the album is a stormy forty-three minute piece called “Oak Spirit”.

In 1994 the title track, “Sunyata (Emptiness)” was included on the two-disc compilation Trances/Drones. Because of the length restrictions of the compact disc format, when Sunyata was finally released on CD in 2000 this track was omitted.

[edit] Track listing

  1. ”Dervish Dreamtime” - 19:00
  2. ”Sunyata (Emptiness)” - 24:00
  3. ”Oak Spirit” - 43:00

[edit] See also