Listen to "Reality Distortion Field" from Robert Stillman's forthcoming album 10,000 Rivers Posted 29 Oct 2025
"Reality Distortion Field" is our first peek at Robert Stillman's forthcoming album 10,000 Rivers- a speculative suite of jazz, ambient and smooth pop-inspired compositions that challenge the myths of Silicon Valley’s early ‘90s techno-utopianism.
Robert Stillman didn’t set out to make a concept album about Steve Jobs. But as a composer and improviser whose music asks questions about his relationship with reality, a curiosity about the promises and follies of technology took him there.
Following an intuitive path from James Bridle’s acclaimed book on non-human intelligence Ways of Being to the seminal 1995 essay “The California Ideology”, Stillman arrived at Walter Isaacson’s biography of Apple founder Steve Jobs – and what would become the catalyst for his new album.
“10,000 Rivers
points to an alternative narrative about a man who is tormented by the
instability of his reality, so tries to invent his way out of it,”
Stillman explains. “Ultimately, his tech designs become expressions of
his will to replace the messy, disordered, temporary nature of the world
with something that strives to be barely physical: streamlined,
symmetrical, uncomplicated, and deathless.”
Highly original, wholly unclassifiable, 10,000 Rivers is part cultural critique, part sonic biography and takes the form of a series of songs, instrumentals and abstract soundscapes that respond directly to moments or paradigms from Jobs’ life.
10,000 Rivers' first single, "Reality Distortion Field," is from the perspective of Jobs himself, speaking to his estranged biological mother.
From Stillman:
"Throughout
his life Jobs repeatedly downplayed the significance of his adoption,
but it's hard not to see his obsession with control as a reaction to the
instability that rupture left him with. His Apple colleagues used the
phrase 'Reality Distortion Field' to describe his ability to bend
people's perception of what was realistic in order to achieve his aims;
this song frames the RDF as part of Jobs's lifelong struggle to 'create'
his way out of chaos.
"The
video accompanying the track was created by the artist/author James
Bridle (Ways of Being; New Dark Age) as part of the process of creating
the album artwork for
10,000 Rivers. Taking the lyric 'Nothing here is
real that isn't touched by these hands' as a point of departure for the
work, the video utilizes hand-tracking software to isolate Jobs's
elaborate gestural language during the 2007 iPhone product launch."
10,000 Rivers will be released January 9, 2026 by Orindal Records (US) & KIT Records (UK).
North American customers can pre-order 10,000 Rivers on vinyl & digital formats HERE.
Customers in EU/UK can place their orders through Bandcamp.
(Photo credit: Paige Jamie Bedard)
