10,000 Rivers by Robert Stillman is out now! 09 Jan 2026
10,000 Rivers, the new album by Maine-born, UK-based multi-instrumentalist & composer Robert Stillman is 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.
PRAISE FOR 10,000 RIVERS:
"There's an echo of the plastic
transparency of '80s soft-pop, but fed through the oneiric strangeness
and dissembled, improvisatory tone-poems of the likes of Lonnie Holley
or Arthur Russell; Stillman is similarly idiosyncratic in his approach
and expression." – UNCUT
"For all its digital trappings, this is a deeply human record, and one of the finest Stillman has made to date." – Aquarium Drunkard
"...an exploration of reality and the ways the assertations and delusions of the tech industry attempt to shape it..." – Various Small Flames
"This is not mindless, mundane music...It’s thoughtful, challenging and difficult, but it’s also musical, playful and serene." – 13th Floor Elevator
North American customers can purchase 10,000 Rivers on vinyl & digital formats HERE.
Customers in EU/UK can place their orders through Bandcamp.
10,000 Rivers vinyl is distributed in North America by The Business & Revolver / Midheaven.
