Here are some recent comments about "Reading the Bones":

VIDNA OBMANA:
"Outstanding. One of the best I have encountered. A real keeper."

GIANLUIGI GASPARETTI (Deep Listenings, Italy):
Just as a finished the newspaper, a packet from across the ocean arrived for me, with a letter signed Biff Johnson. He offered me his first disk and said he'd worked with Steve Roach to make this "profound psychotropic journey." Something told me to close the newspaper and listen to this CD: it could be worth reviewing.

A caption on the CD cover said: "The work of the artist is always to deepen the mystery." I found enough mystery just in the photo of the red rocks -- sacred rocks -- on the cover of the disk. Biff plays synthesizers, percussion, flutes, stones and clay. Roach helped, providing "spatial imprints."

"Roadside Spectre" opens with familiar sounds: synthesizer's ala "Dreamtime Return", rattles, rainsticks, distant heartbeats and earthly pulsations: the ritual begins and the gods are all there to bless a new son of the wind. The noble descent of the sound is evident, opening and closing with subdued currents, very slowly decaying, typical of such "deep music."

"Lost Caravan" begins with descent into the realms of the underworld, to the subterranean world that guards memories of unimaginable times and deeds. Johnson excavates using sound that resembles Jorge Reyes "Tlaloc", dark and esoteric, the same stones in constant motion, the same frenetic beats, supernatural flutes, gloomy electronic sounds.

The cavern becomes deeper and larger, the sound lengthens even more and emotions become almost unbearable: "metallic" visions lead to soft keyboard modulation's in "Bleached White" and "Myth Continuity", then "Earth Extraction" forms infinite fragments with its electronic standstills in 9 minutes of contact with the final experience.

"Pre--history" turns dark and twisted, with its sinister rolling of stones in the most esoteric of rights ever performed.

"Native Space" and "Sumgainala" again recall the most celebrated and profound work of all ambient space: "Dreamtime Return", the source of inspiration of all sound current artists: silences, rumblings, roars, sudden dilations, ancestral flights and memories.

The CD closes with 12 minutes of "The Other Side of What", with an ascent to the sky made with metaphysical liquidity and sudden flashes. It is the apotheosis, and everything -- body, mind, spirit --submits to a treatment that is like a rebirth, a new vital cycle, a new ring of awareness. This experience ended up crushing me. . . sometimes it's actually difficult to stay on this earth; with Biff Johnson, it's absolutely impossible.

"Reading the Bones" (understood as a memorial to history) is a disk one absolutely must not miss, the first one to purchase in this dazzling start to the year.

RICH WILBURN: (a Sacramento musician)
"I really don't like this kind of stuff, but I put this on and fell asleep and had really amazing dreams. A top shelf recording"

HANNA SHAPERO: (Wind and Wire)
"Reading the Bones is the work of Biff Johnson, but Steve Roach added material and final production to this recording in his Timeroom Studio. As a result, this album sounds very much like Roach's music. The familiar Roach textures of floating synthesizer chords, rattles, rainsticks, distant roars, drumbeats and breathy flutes appear on Johnson's album. Even the track titles sound like Roach with their Southwestern atmosphere -- "Bleached White," "Pre-History," "Native Space" -- and the graphic design of the album, with its earthy textures (and barely readable text) could also be a Roach design.

The question is how is this different from Roach's work? Reading the Bones resembles not his current, more rock-like work but the softer, contemplative material he produced in the late '80s, especially Dreamtime Return or some of the "Lost Pieces." So, what has Biff Johnson added to Roach's mix? There is, in some of the pieces, a different choice of harmonies which tend more towards jazz, rather than the more abstract ambient of Roach. And some of the tracks are anchored by a string/electric bass, which adds a welcome tonal structure to a sound which can be formless at times.

At some points, Biff Johnson even veers towards space music along the lines of Serrie or Braheny. All the music on the album is soft and dreamlike, whether in a kind mood or an ominous one. The "kind" space can be found in cut 5, "Myth Continuity," with its sparkling space chords. The "ominous" mood is represented by the quietly mysterious "Earth Extraction" with its clinks of what sound like miners' picks in a desolate Arizona landscape.

Since I like Steve Roach's music, I also like "Reading the Bones" which is more or less an homage to him, including a direct reference to Roach's "The Other Side" in Johnson's piece, "The Other Side of What." But Biff Johnson needs to move away from the territory of the Master and find an individual sound of his own. There is lots of space in the desert where he might find his own voice."

ROBERT AUGE
"I love it.  Soft, floaty, unpercussive. You've got the sense and soul of it.   That's a rare thing."

STEVE ROACH: (the Master)
"My cat loves this stuff."