Steve Reich: The Desert Music

Composer
Released

This recording might be Reich’s most intense. It’s certainly his most dramatic fusion of the hypnotic repetition of his 1960s and 70s work with deeper classical roots. It starts and ends with — and periodically returns to — the kind of relentless one-note pulse familiar from things like Music for 18 Musicians, New York Counterpoint and co. But in between arise orchestral and choral themes that go all the way back through Mahler, to baroque counterpoint, and even to medieval music. This pendulum between the programmatic and the hypnotic, the past and the endless present, can lead to some really strange mental states if you immerse fully.

Joe Muggs

Suggestions
Violent Violins Exposed cover

Violent Violins Exposed

Babak Ahteshamipour
Movement cover

Movement

Holly Herndon
Pretty Ugly cover

Pretty Ugly

Scratcha DVA
Alien Dreamtime cover

Alien Dreamtime

Spacetime Continuum, Terence McKenna
Ecliptica cover

Ecliptica

Santiago Latorre
Crazy Itch Radio cover

Crazy Itch Radio

Basement Jaxx
It's a Bomb cover

It's a Bomb

Tonn3rr3, Bikaye
Beatcroff Slabs cover

Beatcroff Slabs

Oberman Knocks
Notu_uronlineu cover

Notu_uronlineu

Scratcha DVA