Steve Reich

[Ghost of Troubled Joe]

I've downloaded a few of his works, and am consistently impressed. "Piano Phase" is one of the most amazing things I've heard in a long time...looping piano lines that meld and melt into each other. "Six Marimbas" is another stand-out, with constantly changing and flexible rhythms. Great stuff...any fans here? Any more tracks that I should delve into?

[butnut]

I do admire his early works, which, from what I've read and people told me, really came as a breath of fresh air in the late 60s. I have much more respect for Reich than I do for Glass or Adams, partly because he did a lot of work studying all those African drummers, which had a clear influence on his pieces.  However, I don't really like anything he wrote from the mid-70s onwards. He started added what I would call 'cheesy' harmonies, and I just turned off I'm afriad. A friend lent me 'Different Trains' and I just found it really embarrassing, to be honest.

But he'll always be an important figure, so I don't want to knock him too much. Ooh, and I shook his hand once!

[Ambient Sheep]

I'd like to know more, if only because the main twiddly riff of The Orb's "Little Fluffy Clouds" is apparently a loop of a Steve Reich tune being covered by the guitarist Pat Metheny.

Also, on that BBC4 documentary about Minimalist Music, I think I liked Steve Reich's "In C" the best of anything they played.

[butnut]

Also, on that BBC4 documentary about Minimalist Music, I think I liked Steve Reich's "In C" the best of anything they played.

Um...that's by Terry Riley

[Ambient Sheep]

Also, on that BBC4 documentary about Minimalist Music, I think I liked Steve Reich's "In C" the best of anything they played.

Um...that's by Terry Riley

Awwwwwwwwwww fuck.  So it is.  <blush>

I hate talking about things about which I know so little.  Now I can't remember whether it was "In C" that I liked best, or whatever it was of Steve Reich that they played (if they played any).  Probably the former.

I do know that I also want to investigate Terry Riley, because I *believe* he did "Rainbow in Curved Air", which was used as narration background in the first series of Hitchhikers Guide and I liked quite a lot.

[Ciarán2]

Steve Reich can be head-wrecking or superb or both at the same time. I don't have that many of his pieces as they are - as are all contemporary classical cds - wretchedly expensive. However I can recommend;

"Drumming", "Music For 18 Musicians", "Piano Phase", "Music For Mallet Instruments, Voice and Organ", "Electric Counterpoint", "Different Trains", "It's Gonna Rain", "Come Out" and "Clapping Music".

I think all of the above are worth investing in, and as you can probably guess amount to all of his work I possess. "Little Fluffy Clouds" samples a short "fast" section from "Electric Counterpoint". It was recorded with Pat Metheny in 1989, very interesting sleevenotes as to how they came up with it by Pat playing his guitar lines and Reich then splicing the tape up to create new patterns. My favourite of all the above pieces is "Music For Mallet Instruments, Voice and Organ" - deliriously pretty.

[Joy Nktonga]

I've owned "Reich:Remixed" for a few years now and love it, but infuriatingly I can't get into any of his work "as is". I've no idea what keeps me from his enjoying his material as it was intended, but after ordering in as much of his stuff that I could whilst working in the record shop I just didn't like it. It's possible that I just listened to it in the wrong environment, but then I never had that problem with much else I was sampling that way at the time.

In spite of having nothing productive to add to this thread, I would like to thank you all for making me get my remix CD out. I'm listening to it now and I'm enjoying it immensely.

[ClaudiusMaximus]

On Archive.org there is a recording of Steve Reich's group performing some of his early works at the opening of the Berkeley University Museum, about an hour long, and it's fantastic.  Here is the link:

http://www.archive.org/audio/audio-details-db.php?collection=other_minds&collectionid=ReichBerkeleyMuseum

I just noticed that it is only available for streaming now - I managed to download the whole thing as a ginormous wav file when they first put it up, they must have taken it down for bandwidth reasons.

[splattermac]

here you go

http://punkcast.com/450/index.html

I've known about this clip for about half a year but rarely does a thread surface where you can post the thing, phew I can relax now.