For my latest self indulgent post I decided to bring to your attention this piece of music by the composer Steve Reich,quite simply my favourite piece of music ever.Introduced to me by my dad one weekend years back.I would go through his vinyl collection all youthfully brash and dismissive of most of his records.I liked a few purely through familiarity and exposure from an early age,The Beach Boys,The Drifters and The Coasters for example, however I had passed over this record many times not knowing of its content.
One Sunday my father got up, after me declaring I'd heard everything I liked and everything else was boring and put this on.He set a scene of when he first heard it at his friends once,early morning with sunlight shining through the windows and so forth. I was transfixed from the off,the subtle changes that evolve throughout the piece and the way new sounds and instruments chip away or melt into the music already present.The complexities I won't pretend to understand or explain but this Wikipedia page explains it in much better detail than I can.
I was convinced it was done by computers,refusing to believe this could be performed live but it can and has,the youtube link is to a performance in Japan in 2008 (The one time i've been able to see Steve Reich play he was performing a shorter piece called 2 x 5,however I missed it as he was supporting Kraftwerk at Manchesters Velodrome and it took the length of his set to go to the loo and get served at the bar).
At the very least give yourself an hour aside and listen to it ,considering the current state of popular music you owe it to your ears.
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