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Baker's Dozen

Music Of The Spheres: Rhys Chatham's Favourite Albums
Danny Riley , June 15th, 2016 10:37

The veteran avant-garde composer picks records by Morton Subotnick, Charlemagne Palestine and Maryanne Amacher and more to tell Danny Riley how his music, including new album Pythagorean Dream, has evolved

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Steve Reich – Piano Phase
This had a direct effect on Pythagorean Dream, in the way I was working with loops. This piece starts with single riff, looped by a piano player. The second piano player follows and goes out of phase, so it doesn't sound like a loop. I was thinking of that piece when I made Pythagorean Dream. I go through three loop delays, one is set to eight seconds, one is nine and one is ten. The loop effect builds up to become continuous melody that isn't repeating. That cascading phasing riff effect was directly inspired by Steve Reich's Piano Phase. But that overall effect of one instrument sounding like one hundred still came from Terry Riley.