Bob Holroyd's music explores the terrain where technological and primeval music intersect. Although realized in a London recording studio, Holroyd's fourth full-length collection, Without Within, features elements of Asian and African cultures flourishing within the rhythms and melodies. One of the tracks, titled "Dreams of Olduvai," evokes the African region holding the earliest evidence of human life. That reference could allude to the appeal of any given Bob Holroyd track, where the digital magic of his recording studio enables the musically articulate Englishman to summon visions of lost worlds. Remarkably, his primordial songs and soundscapes play equally well in dance clubs or in a place like the edge of the Olduvai Gorge echoing both man's earliest musical aspirations and his most recent inventions.

Without the explicit intention of doing so, Bob Holroyd has forged a lasting interface with contemporary dance culture, owing to the sustained popularity of "African Drug." The track first appeared on Fluidity and Structure, Holroyd's initial commercial album that was the soundtrack to an art and music exhibition he staged at "The Big Chill " amongst other venues in 1993/4. It was subsequently remixed by Coldcut and released on their Journeys by DJ compilation CD. Holroyd himself then remixed it for his Six Degrees full-length debut, A Different Space. "AfricanDrug" has appeared on numerous compilations, initiating a surge tide of licensing that has placed Holroyd tracks on collections such as Francois K's Essential Mix, Buddha Beats, Claude Challe's Sun and Ministry of Sound's Pure Global Chillout. His music has also garnered broad exposure in his native land via use on English television, with "Bombay Blush," a program centering on youth culture for Indian and Asian-English communities.

The album's opener, "Looking Back" had its genesis in a true old-world collaboration. Holroyd was invited to remix the voices of Koi San tribesmen from the Kalahari desert for a charity compilation issued by the Melt 2000 label. Titled Sanscapes One, the collection was created in an effort to draw attention to the plight of the Kalahari Bushmen and their struggle to survive. After the release, the Bushmen came to England. !Ngube, whose voice is heard on "Looking Back," expressed via an interpreter that Holroyd's "Looking Back" was the Bushmen's favorite track on the entire record! Summarizing the appeal of these desert troubadours, Holroyd notes that "Their culture is thousands of years old, they're very different from us, but the essential similarities in our lives can't be denied."

As with much of his output, "Looking Back" finds Holyroyd using music as a tool to cross cultural boundaries. Not surprisingly, he has found inspiration in the work of Peter Gabriel, whose globe-spanning musical agenda is aptly framed by the song "Games Without Frontiers." Holroyd recorded a cover of the track in tribute to Gabriel's pioneering efforts, with cult American solo artist and multi-instrumentalist Happy Rhodes singing the refrain originally voiced by Kate Bush on Gabriel's recording. (An additionally modern twist on the duet stems from Holroyd never having met his collaborator in person; they traded files from ProTools sessions via trans-Atlantic courier.)

The cast of supporting players in the soundscapes created by Bob Holroyd has grown noticeably on Without Within, but the engineering and programming of Jerry Peal (proprietor of the Twilight Fisheries studio in London) remain intrinsic components of Holroyd's sound. The new album's enhanced sonic palette includes horn charts, written and led by Kevin Robinson. Holroyd was drawn to the latter's idiosyncratic trumpet stylings. Well-known as a journeyman session player, Robinson has worked with Steve Winwood and Incognito. Describing his horn sound, Holroyd notes "Kevin plays odd textures, outside the trumpet's usual vocabulary; his sound is often more like a digeridoo, where vocal formats inform the colors of the horn. Not overly polished sounding, but quite soulful."

Without Within achieves a status all too rare among contemporary electronic-abetted music, in that it avoids categorization. While quick to praise the efforts of other forward-looking artists whose work encompasses both primordial and digital cultures, Holroyd has long ago left his influences behind and carved his own musical path. His musical signature - sinuous melodies unfolding atop polyrhythms that function as Morse Code for the Id - is best described by a track title from Without Within: "The Space Between."