Steve’s Hypnos Secret Sounds release “Children of Alcyone” was reviewed this month on textura along with 3 other Hypnos releases.
Steve released his “Circular Scriptures” album on Relaxed Machinery in 2010 (look under “releases” in the top menu).
I’ve copied the Steve Brand section of the review below, the full text is at textura
A supra-terrestrial theme also runs through Children of Alcyone, the second release by Steve Brand (who’s also issued recordings under the Augur name) to appear on Hypnos Secret Sounds. The inspiration for the work came from the writings of Barbara Marciniak whose books supposedly channel information from the Pleiadians, distant ancestors of ours from the Pleiades constellation (Alcyone, incidentally, the name of the constellation’s ‘central sun’). Initial sound sketches for the recording were produced in September 2007 during a master class taught by Steve Roach and were refined subsequent to it at Brand’s studio. The material on Children of Alcyone is minimal, even simple, by design but is alluring nonetheless. Lonely tones whistle to one another across immense expanses, and a melancholy spirit shadows the four calming meditations. A brooding epic of long tones and ringing percussive flourishes, “Outside the Grid of Time” forcefully draws the listener into its murky depths, but the recording’s coup de grace is the stirring “Light Age” where minimal synthetic tones unfurl gracefully for an entrancing twenty-three minutes. Showing a deft and pitch-perfect touch, Brand skilfully weaves the elements into hypnotic form, never hurrying the material along nor slowing it down too much either. The result is that rare thing: ambient music that’s both artful and moving.