I notice that these minimalist posts have caused controversy and stimulated conversations,then lets see if we can up the ante as This is my Third (steve)Reich post........just one badly constructed sentence in and i've done it...a Nazi reference!...And why not? The main theme of 'Different Trains' is Shoah related,comparing the role of the railways in the holocaust to their more positive peacetime job.
One of the most insideous roles of the railway in modern times would be taking one to a Pat Methany concert. Such a pospect would have me munching down Zyklon B by the tin and filling my lungs with the sweet relief of cyanide fumes. I've never really listened to the Methany side of this album,but side one is one of Reich's greatest hits. Recreating the relentless journey to the death factory, as played by the Kronos Quartet, interspersed with dialogue samples from Holocaust Survivors. Not that there were many Survivors from Treblinka for example....67 out of approx 900,000......as we are told.The actual figures have been in a state of flux ever since the liberation of Auchwitz, in order to get that magical six Million number as prophesized in Jewish folklore which would precipitate the creation of the Jewish homeland. Auchwitz was rounded down by a couple of million,Majdanek's victims were altered from one million to 78,000 today. Many unanswered questions remain about Treblinka. How did they asphyxiate so many people with just one captured Soviet tank diesel engine.Its notoriously hard to gas even one person with Diesel fumes(which contains quite a lot of deadly...Oxygen!?) nevermind upwards of 3/4 of a million people......no Zyklon B,not even for delousing, at Treblinka.
Oh Christ!Before i'm labelled a poundshop David Irving,No i'm not denying that the so-called Holocaust happened (bla-bla blah!).There's plenty of evidence that it most certainly did. Its just the massaging of the figures and facts of the 'Extermination' camps that one has issues with.Most of it was for post-war anti-nazification reasons,and some was to build pressure for the creation of Israel.....History needs to be revised.....Bla-Bla-Blahhhh!...i'll shut up now.I'm starting to bore myself even more than if I was at a Pat Methany concert at the edge of Hell.Holocaust fatique is also a real problem.
I dunno why the Nazi's bothered with poison gas at all.All they had to do was play Methany's back catalogue and all the camp inmates would have thrown themselves alive into the cremation pits to escape the suffering.
Well you gotta write about something haven't you?
Apart from the sheer joy of liberal baiting,I haven't been called a Nazi for a long time now, so its about time the anti-anti semite mob turned their attention away from Jeremy Corbyn and organised a boycott of this blog. I have also yet to see any evidence of any Anti-Semitism in The UK Labour Party either.There's plenty of anti-semitism in the Israeli government, as Palestinians,you know the ones on the other side of that massive wall,the ones whose kids get bombed, are actually 'semites' too, believe it or not!? And their lives are the exact same value as that of their semetic cousins on the other side of the wall.Wait and see if Steve does a composition about that human tragedy in the near future....i think not.No-one gives a shit, because they're arabs,and you won't get the funding.
And to think this is the redacted version?I removed the part about how hard it is to burn a corpse.....i could write a minimalist opera about that one.
Tracklist:
Different Trains
1 –Kronos Quartet America – Before The War 8:59
2 –Kronos Quartet Europe – During The War 7:31
3 –Kronos Quartet After The War 10:20
Electric Counterpoint
4 –Pat Metheny Fast 6:51
5 –Pat Metheny Slow 3:21
6 –Pat Metheny Fast 4:29
My diseased mind habored a cruel fantasy that Glass and Reich were vicious minimalist rivals, often seen bitching about each other, during lonely drunken tantrums, throwing darts at their nemisis's mugshots,and favorable press cuttings.
It seems that my fantasy will stay just that, a fantasy, fermenting in the mind of this bitter and vindictive crypto journalist until his grave.(Oh Shit I've started talking about myself in the third person...Help me!)
Yes, Philip plays one of the four organs in the title piece,alongside minimalist chum,Steven Reich, unless,that is, they were having an 'organ-off' that accidentally got recorded.......who won is open to debate, but it sounds like it was all written down and interpreted accurately enough for it to be one of Reich's most seminal pieces. I would have thought that Reich would have allocated the role of Maraca shaker to his not so-bitter rival, but no, Glass got to play one of the actuel organs!?
If you don't know what it could possibly sound like, then download it.If you wanted any clues beforehand,and rightly so, its repetitive,out of phase in swelling waves like the cover photo, with harsh sounding organs.Its takes no prisoners,and could result in anger directed at the listener from those innocent parties who are not ready for such challenges to musical convention.....mainly WAGs*
* a footballing term for 'Wives and Girlfiends',most famously blamed for the failure of the England Squad to win the World Cup sometime in the noughties......the real reason was that they were just crap!
Tracklist:
A Four Organs 15:35
B Phase Patterns 16:35
We all feel rather too clever by half when we add some recorded dialogue to our homemade experimental miesterwerks don't we? Well,it may automatically qualify you to call yourself 'Avant-Garde' but this tactic has been around for as long as pop-art itself. In 1965 the not-so-young Steve Reich discovered that if he played one tape slightly slower than an other tape playing the same thing,it would slowly become out of phase and we get a jumbled up confused mess abstracting the meaning of the original to the point of the nonsense that it is. So Steve could just set the tapes running and sit back to let the music,or non-music, write itself. Another idea that Eno nicked,but in his case he used tape loops which eventually came back into to phase momentarily before slipping back out of phase again.
Reich wasn't the first to mess around with recorded dialogue of course. As far as I can assess that honour goes to Brion Gysin, followed diligently by William S. Burroughs, who were a direct influence on such Industrial types as Cabaret Voltaire, and Throbbing Gristle,before it was dumbed down by the availability of the Fairlight Sampler.This started a separate thread leading to Paul 'N.n.n.n.n.n.n.Nineteen' Hardcastle, and a flood of "Ah Yeah's" on yer kiddie-pop hits like Timmy Mallets version of "Teensy Weensy Yellow Polka-dot Bikini"......follow that with samples of Colonel Kurtz mumbling "The Horror....The Horror!"
So the moral behind this ugly truth is that no matter how avant garde you think you are, there's always some intellectual minnow who are gonna show your genius up for the sad cliché it has become,as it becomes inclusive rather than exclusive. Timmy Mallet...the great leveller.
Naturally, Steve Reich was messing with dialogue well before it became an Industrial Cliché,but his main innovation was his out of phase compositions, as represented here by his "Piano Phase" piece for two piano's.The discipline involved for two pianists to play at slightly varying tempo's is a thing of awe for me. I often struggle to play constantly in 4/4 time,so when my tempo wavers its incompetence rather than skill. This is the piece from where the Steve Reich style sprung from,and which launched a thousand Philip Glass compositions. Terry Riley was an influence it is said, and also, allegedly, Moondog (coming up soon).
There you go, I managed to write about Steve Reich without a single reference to anything Nazi.....i am now patting myself on the back.Just you wait for my take on "Different Trains"...I can't wait!
Tracklist:
A1 Come Out 12:54
A2 Piano Phase 20:26
B1 Clapping Music 4:39
B2 It’s Gonna Rain 17:31
