A few years back, the Best Guy in the World (aka Mark D) introduced me to the minimalist music of Steve Reich. We had been going through a major 60’s music period, which happens about every 3 minutes in my life, and had discovered something terribly interesting, different and impressive.
Steve Reich, along with contemporary and sometimes partner Terry Riley, is credited with starting up the minimalist/modern classical music genre around 1966 in NYC. By using tape loops to make phasing patters, or repetitive speckles of grungily recorded speech, he creates a sonic universe that is weird at first, boring at second, annoying at third, and blissfully meditative from there on out.
One of his best known, “Come Out” is basically a clip of a man saying something along the lines of “come out da show dem”. The songs beings like you might expect many of his experimental/electronic followers to start: a rhythmic repetition of a single phrase. There are 2 things you can do from here: pay extremely close attention to how slowly and methodically the beats and phrasing is changing, or just relax and begin to hear all kinds of wack shit:
Come Map the Show Then
Cum Opta Showden
Commapta Snowden
Come Out There Shorty
It’s so impressive that this guy was doing this before drum machines and modern technological help. The Books' album "Lemon of Pink" as well as The Notwist's "Neon Golden" are very similiar to some of the stylings that can be heard on 2006' Reich Remixed, especially the Books' "A True Story of a Story of True Love". Four Tet’s drum and Xylophone-heavy working of “Drumming” may be quite a departure for hardcore Reich fans, but I love it.
Apparently, these kids do too:
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment